


Where There Is A Flame

by eternaleponine



Series: Where There Is A Flame [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Complete, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Slow Build, Stalking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 23:17:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 175
Words: 429,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5474192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Where there is desire, there is gonna be a flame.</i><br/><i>Where there is a flame, someone's bound to get burned.</i><br/><i>But just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die.</i><br/><i>You've gotta get up and try.</i><br/>- P!nk, "Try"</p><p> </p><p>A modern/college AU for The 100, told in alternating chapters from Clarke and Lexa's points of view.  </p><p>This is a slow build.  VERY slow.  But they do get there in the end, I promise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clarke

Clarke sat staring at her phone, trying not to think about the fact that it felt like the (surprisingly graffiti-free) walls of the stall were closing in on her. She had nowhere to go, a fact that she hadn't really considered until she'd already gotten in her car, and nearly backed into the mailbox in her haste to escape the driveway of the house that was no longer home. Which was her own decision, and she was fine with it (really, seriously, she was _fine_ with it), but it didn't make it any easier to sit on the toilet in a rest area somewhere between the Middle of Nowhere and Timbukthree and realize that she didn't have any idea where she was going to spend the night.

Once out of the driveway, she'd gotten on the highway and headed back towards school. It hadn't occurred to her at the time that the dorms were closed, and that they changed the locks or deactivated the pads that read the chips in their student IDs or whatever they did to prevent unwanted college students from squatting in their dorm rooms through the holidays. Maybe one building was open, but you could only stay there if you arranged it ahead of time, and it probably cost money, and mostly it was just for international students who couldn't afford to go home and didn't have any American friends willing to put them up for the break. 

But sitting here wasn't solving anything, so she got up and flushed and washed her hands, and went out to her car to sit there instead. At least out here she as pointed in the right direction, right? Or something. She flipped on her phone again, the brightness of the screen making her wince in the darkness. She opened up her contacts and pretty much was the first name listed was her roommate, Octavia. Well, second, she guessed, the first being Octavia's brother Bellamy, since they shared a last name and B came before O. She thought about calling her, but they were probably doing family stuff, and she didn't want to impose on them again like she had at Thanksgiving, when her mom had been away at a conference (and she'd been welcome to come along, of course, and get dinner with her somewhere, if she wanted, but she hadn't wanted because the idea of eating Thanksgiving dinner in a hotel restaurant was more than she could stomach – no pun intended). The Blakes weren't rich by any stretch of the imagination, and there wasn't really a place for her to stay. Her sleeping on the couch had been a pain in the butt for everyone, and a pain in the back for her, and she wasn't eager to repeat it.

There was also the fact that it would require explaining to Octavia what had happened, why she'd run out on Christmas Day and why she refused to go back, and she really didn't feel like talking about it. Not now. Maybe not ever although she guessed it wasn't likely that she would get away with not talking about it ever. 

A police car sped by on the highway, lights and sirens, and for a second her heart leapt into her throat as she waited for it to pull into the rest area and block her into her space so she couldn't escape charges of grand theft auto. Because _technically_ the car was registered in her mother's name, and so was the insurance and everything else, and if Abby Griffin wanted to get her daughter back, that might be the easiest way to do it. But she wasn't that petty, that she would force the police (who almost certainly had more important things to be doing) to go after her on a basically fake charge just to get her to come back. 

Clarke kept scrolling, and finally stopped on a name that stood all on its own, and she honestly wasn't sure if it was his first name or his last name, but all she'd ever heard the guy called was Finn. He was in the same fraternity as Bellamy, so she'd run into him a few times at parties. (Bellamy's theory being that if he invited his little sister to parties at his own frat, she would be less tempted to go to others, and he would be there to keep an eye on her. So far, it had pretty much worked, so maybe there was something to it.) They hadn't talked a lot, but she did remember him mentioning, probably around Thanksgiving when she'd been talking about going home with the Blakes instead of to her own home, that he wasn't really close with his family, and he tried to avoid going home whenever possible. He'd even spent the summer, taking a few classes and working. She'd gotten the feeling that his parents were just as okay with the arrangement as he was.

And hadn't Bellamy said something about how he was going to have to go back from break early, because he had to work? And how it was a good thing that the frat house didn't really close, even though mostly no one would be there?

Her thumb rested on his name, and his information popped up... which was really just a blank page except his name and number (which she didn't actually remember putting in there... had he grabbed her phone at some point and did it? That was kind of creepy, wasn't it?)... and then before she realized it the phone was ringing, but she hadn't actually tapped on the call button, had she?

Too late now.

"Hello?"

"Um, hi," she said. "Finn?"

"Hey, Clarke," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice. "Merry Christmas!"

"Yeah, thanks," she said. "This is going to sound a little bit strange, but... where are you?"

"That sounds more than strange," Finn said. "That sounds creepy. Are you stalking me? Because I'm pretty sure the first rule of stalking someone is not to call them up and ask where they are. I'm pretty sure that you're supposed to _know_ where they are, and tell them where they are."

"That's only in horror movies," Clarke said. "At least the telling them where they are part. But seriously, though... are you at home, or...?"

"No," Finn said. "I... it's just not a great idea for me to go home right now," he said. "I'm just chilling out at the frat. No one else is here, which kind of sucks, but I got myself a little Charlie Brown tree and a bottle of Advocaat, so really, it could be worse."

"Do you maybe feel up for some company?" she asked. 

Was it possible to hear someone perk up? Maybe he was just sitting up. Whatever it was, Clarke could swear that she heard him become suddenly more alert. "Why? Where are you? What's going on?"

"Because I need a place to go, halfway back to school already, and I really don't want to talk about it right now. If you're okay with that... maybe we could keep each other company?" Which sounded a lot more suggestive when she said it out loud than it had in her head, but then the whole thing sounded pretty suggestive when she thought about it. Which wasn't her intention, but if it meant that he said yes, that was good, right? The rest they could figure out later. She wasn't _actually_ agreeing to anything.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, absolutely. You know where the place is, and the driveway is empty for once, so you won't end up parked down the block, and just, y'know, knock when you get here. Unless you want me to keep you company on the drive?"

"No," Clarke said. "But thanks. I'll see you soon." She hung up, feeling a little weird and a little gross about the whole situation, like maybe she was taking advantage, because she knew that he liked her, that he was interested in being more than just friends (or at least gave every indication that he was) and she honestly wasn't sure what her feelings about him were. She wasn't actually sure what her feelings about _anything_ were right at the moment, and maybe the best thing to do was to just not feel anything at all? 

Not that she'd ever been good at that. Not without the liberal application of alcohol, and usually that just delayed things until a time even less convenient. But when Finn greeted her at the door with a glass of what appeared to be eggnog (which... who decided that drinking raw eggs was a good idea, anyway?) she tossed it back anyway, and when he refilled it, she drank that too. 

"Are you seriously watching the Yule Log?" she asked. "There is nothing else on TV?"

"It's festive," he said. "I wanted to create a holiday atmosphere for you." 

There was the tiniest hesitation before the word holiday, and Clarke got the feeling that what he'd really wanted to say, and probably realized would be a bad choice, was romantic. He'd wanted to create a romantic atmosphere. 

"Okay," she said. "What about Christmas dinner, then?" Her stomach was growling, protesting the fact that she'd left before she had a chance to eat more than some cheese and crackers and a few cookies. (Store bought, not homemade. Abby Griffin did not bake. Clarke was pretty sure that the cheese came pre-sliced, too.) 

"You're in luck," Finn said. "I actually planned ahead, and I've got a Christmas chicken – no turkey, sorry, but turkey just makes people sleepy anyway, right? – and all the fixings, courtesy of Whole Foods. I have to warm some of it up, but it shouldn't take long. Make yourself at home."

Clarke picked up the remote and found something - _anything_ \- other than the Yule Log to watch, and then wandered into the kitchen because it felt more awkward to sit in the giant living room by herself than to sit in here with him not really talking. 

"You sure you don't want to talk about it?" he asked. "You're looking kind of broody."

"I'm sure," she said. "Why? Do you want to talk about why you're here instead of at home?"

"Touché."

So they just shared the silence, and then when the food was warm they shared that, and another drink, and a few more after that, and when they were sitting and watching a movie and his arm slipped around her, she didn't object, and when his lips brushed the back of her neck as he pulled her in to lean against his chest, she didn't object to that either, and when after the movie was over he asked if she was tired and she said not really and he asked if she wanted to maybe go to bed anyway, it felt like they had already gone so far down the road past Friendsville that what was one more step? 

And if one more step turned into two turned into who the hell can count when someone is doing _that_ , what of it? It was her life, and she could live it however she wanted, and to hell with what anyone else thought, right? 

Because that was what Griffin women did. Her mother had already proven that, and the apple didn't fall far from the tree and all of those clichés. 

Would she wake up tomorrow and regret it? Maybe. But tonight, just for one night, she decided that she was giving herself permission to make the sort of mistakes that kids given their first taste of freedom made all the time. She would clean up the mess in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sure you will all be happy to know that my laptop did in fact get fixed on Monday. Yay!


	2. Lexa

"I told you not to come," Lexa snapped, although it came out sounding more exhausted than anything, but that was what the better part of a day on an airplane would do to you. Especially when the plane contained screaming babies, flatulent business men, and perky new brides on their way home from their honeymoon 'dan undah!' (and her attempt at an Australian accent was atrocious enough that it offended Lexa, who wasn't even Australian) who couldn't shut up about how cute koalas were and how she'd been afraid to go in the water because of sharks but weren't the beaches beautiful anyway? About an hour into a monologue that was punctuated only by the faintest of grunts of agreement, Lexa wondered if the husband was regretting the choices he'd made in his life. 

"Merry Christmas to you, too," Anya said, reaching to take Lexa's carry-on, but she clutched it against her side, so Anya let her hand drop. "How was your flight?"

"Long."

"Well, you look good," Anya lied, and they both knew it. "Or... you look tan, anyway."

"I did have to leave the flat occasionally," Lexa said. "The sun is pretty much unavoidable when you do."

"I'm glad that you did," Anya said. "I was—"

"Don't," Lexa said. "Don't start."

"Okay," Anya said. "Let's go get your bags."

"Let's not," Lexa said. "Let's you leave and I'll get my own bags."

"How do you plan to get home then?" Anya asked.

"I booked a shuttle."

"I unbooked it."

"You didn't even know I'd booked it," Lexa said. "You didn't even know my flight information." Which brought her up short. Anya _hadn't_ known her flight information. Lexa hadn't told her because she had wanted to avoid this very scene... possibly forever. Because she had a credit card in her pocket in her father's name, and she wasn't afraid to use it to book a trip to somewhere – anywhere – else. She'd been thinking about it the whole long, sleepless flight: where she would go, what she would do when she got there, how she would avoid anyone figuring out where she'd gone so that they couldn't find her and try to convince her to come back.

"I hacked your email," Anya said.

"You did not," Lexa countered. 

Anya raised an eyebrow. 

"Oh, go to hell," Lexa said, and she headed for baggage claim, except baggage claim for international flights was in a different area from baggage claim for domestic flights, because of customs and all of that shit, and she followed the wrong signs, stomping off in the wrong direction until Anya caught up to her and got hold of her backpack, stopping her and spinning her around in one deft move that nearly got her clocked as Lexa reacted without thinking to being grabbed.

"Easy," Anya said, pushing down her outstretched fist after quickly dodging. "You don't want to get noticed."

"You sound like some kind of kidnapper," Lexa grumbled, but she turned and followed Anya back in the opposite direction.

"Maybe I am," Anya said. "But it's for your own good."

That's what she'd said about sending her away for a semester, too, having pulled strings or manipulated the system somehow to get Lexa into the study abroad program after every conceivable deadline had already passed. And maybe it had worked, at least sometimes, a little bit, for a little while, but now she was back and so was everything that she'd been trying so hard to escape and forget. 

"Did you really unbook my shuttle?" Lexa asked, heaving her suitcase off of the luggage carousel once it had finally been cleared by customs.

"No," Anya said. "Hopefully there's not some kind of nonrefundable deposit."

Lexa shrugged. "I don't care if it there is." It was on Dad's credit card, and he owed her at least that much, considering everything that had happened, and everything that hadn't, in the last... was it only six months? No, seven, and how could she forget that? How could she lose count, when she'd been counting the days, hours, minutes, seconds, since _it_ happened and her life shattered into irreparable shards that cut every time she moved, and resurfaced every time a wound started to scab over and scar.

"Okay," Anya said. "My car's this way."

"I'm not..." But Lexa didn't even bother to finish the sentence, because really, what else did she think she was going to do? The address she'd given the shuttle was a hotel, where she'd planned to stay until the start of the semester or until she came up with a better plan. She didn't have anywhere else to go, and the more she used the card, the more likely her father was to take an interest in her whereabouts and well-being and that was pretty much literally the last thing that she wanted. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"Home," Anya said. 

"I don't..." This time it wasn't so much that Lexa didn't finish the sentence as that she couldn't. The words wouldn't come out. Her lips shaped them, but no sound came out. 

_I don't have a home,_ she thought. 

_I lost it,_ she thought.

_My home is gone._

"You do," Anya said softly, and although Lexa flinched when her hand landed on her shoulder, she didn't pull away. "You do, and you always will."

She was too tired to argue, she decided. She was too tired to do anything, especially after helping Anya lift her just barely under the weight limit suitcase and cram it into the trunk. Her backpack she shoved into the back seat and started to crawl in after it.

"Whoa," Anya said. "I'm not your chauffeur. Get up here."

Lexa's eyes closed, and it took several slow, deep breaths before she was able to make herself move, leaving the backpack behind and clawing open the passenger side door to collapse into the front seat. Neither of them said it, but Lexa could see that Anya was thinking the same thing that she was: _Old habits die hard._

Because _she_ had always called shotgun, and eventually Lexa had stopped even trying, except _she_ liked the game of rushing to call it first so Lexa had played along again, just to give her the satisfaction of winning, because what wouldn't she have given her back then?

What wouldn't she give her now, if she was here to be given anything at all?

"I can't do this," Lexa said, and she didn't mean for it to be out loud but it was, and her walls were falling down and her filters were switching off and she needed to be drunk or asleep or both right now, but she was neither, and alone, she needed to be alone more than anything, except no, she needed to _not_ be alone, that was the whole problem, that she was alone, that she would never _not_ be alone again, and she'd thought she was over this, she'd thought she'd gotten through it, gotten past it, but it was Christmas, damn it, it was fucking _Christmas **again**_ because she'd already had Christmas once in Australia but through the wonders of time zones, here she was to live it all over again, and why had she done that? Why had she book her flight for fucking _Christmas_ of all days?

(Which begged the question, too, what the hell had possessed the newlyweds to fly back from their honeymoon on Christmas?)

"Lexa," Anya said. "Lexa, look at me."

Lexa didn't look, she _glared_ , but the expression was watered down (no pun intended, ha ha) by the fact that she couldn't see clearly through the tears that flooded her eyes and threatened to spill, and she could tell herself all she wanted that it was just because she was tired, so damned tired, but she knew better. 

"You can do this," Anya said. "You can, and you will."

"Why?" Lexa asked. "Because you say so?"

"If that's the reason that you need right now, then yes," Anya said. "Because I say so. Until you're ready to do it for yourself."

"What self-help book did you get that from?" Lexa asked. "Are you going to be my guru or something? My life coach?"

"Want me to be you do, then your guru I will be," Anya said, in an impression of Yoda that was so bad Lexa couldn't help laughing even as she felt hot tears overflow and her nose started running. She took the tissue that Anya offered. 

"It's good to hear you laugh," Anya said softly. "You're going to be okay."

Lexa shrugged and forced herself to nod, to agree, even if she didn't believe it, because Anya had been with her through everything and she owed her at least that much. (She owed her a lot more than that, debt that she could never repay, but if it was only a drop in the bucket at least it was something?)

Anya started the car and got them pointed in the right direction to get out of the parking garage, and then out of the tangle of roads that surrounded the airport and out onto the highway.

"You didn't really hack my email, did you?" Lexa asked, when she had finally managed to fight back the lump in her throat enough to be able to force words past it. 

"No," Anya said. "Turns out that there aren't too many flights coming in from Australia on Christmas, so I made an educated guess, and then just waited until you turned up."

"Did I tell you I was coming home on Christmas?" Lexa asked. She didn't remember, but then there was quite a bit about the last few days that she didn't remember with any degree of clarity, because she'd spent most of it trying to numb herself from the inside out in the best way she knew how.

"Yes," Anya said. "Or you said you might, and then you never said anything different, so..." She shrugged. "Looks like I got lucky. And that I'm a pretty good guesser."

"Thanks for coming," Lexa said. "You didn't have to."

"Yes," Anya said. "I did. What kind of friend would I be if I left you stranded at the airport after you've been away for months?"

_The kind I deserve,_ Lexa thought, but she didn't say it, because she was too tired to argue. She just let her head rest against the window and closed her eyes, letting the world fade into the hum of voices on the radio, turned down so far it was almost inaudible, and the vibrations of tires on pavement as Anya took her toward a concept she no longer believed in: home.


	3. Clarke

Clarke woke up alone, disoriented for a moment as her subconscious processed the fact that she was not at home. Strange bed, strange room. Then the memories of the night before came tumbling back and she reached for her phone, barely looking at it as she tapped through the screens to her recent contacts and dialed Octavia's number.

"Griffin, you better be _dead_." 

The voice on the other end was muffled, like Octavia hadn't even bothered her remove her face from her pillow before answering the phone, and it was only then that Clarke looked at the time. 8:03 am. On the morning after Christmas. No college student _ever_ got up that early unless they had a class, and even then it was a crapshoot. 

"Shit," she muttered. "O, I'm sorry. Go back to sleep. I'll talk to you later."

A groan, then the rustling of blankets. "No," Octavia said, sounding slightly more awake. Clarke imagined that she'd forced herself to sit up or something so she wouldn't just drift off again. "Talk to me now. You wouldn't have called at this ungodly hour if it wasn't important."

"It's..." Clarke sighed. "I think I might have made a huge mistake."

"Huge like 'I think I got myself kidnapped by a serial killer' huge?"

"No," Clarke said. "Probably not that huge."

"'I got some guy I just met's name tattooed on my ass because it seemed like a good idea at the time' huge?"

Clarke couldn't help laughing. "No, not that either." 

"How much trouble can you possibly have gotten yourself into at home?" Octavia asked. "Did you run into old friends or something? Because I can't imagine that you ran with all that rough a crowd in high school. Or, like, ever." 

Clarke rubbed her eyes, wiping the sleep away. Her roommate (and best friend? she wasn't sure who else would fill that role if it wasn't Octavia, and she thought – hoped – that O would agree) always had a way of putting things in perspective and making her feel better. "I'm not at home," she said.

"Where are you, then?" Octavia asked, her alertness level instantly increasing by at least half. "What happened?"

"I'm at the frat house," Clarke said. "I... uh... slept with Finn?"

"Is that a question?" Octavia asked. "Like, are you not sure if you slept with him? Because you're not that much of a lightweight, and you're not that stupid, that you would drink so much that you wouldn't be sure about that kind of thing."

"No, I definitely slept with him," Clarke said. 

"Then are you just trying so spare my feelings? Because I'm over him, seriously."

Back at the beginning of the year, the first time they'd gone to the frat house, Octavia had taken one look at Finn and laid claim to him. "Just so you know," she'd said. "He's mine."

"Just so you know," Clarke had replied, "I don't care." She hadn't been interested at the time, in Finn or in throwing a wrench in the roommate relationship so early in the game. She wasn't actually 100% sure she was interested now, if she was being totally, brutally honest with herself. Not that last night hadn't been fun, but what had she been doing, really? And why had she been doing it? Had she really wanted _him_ , or had she just wanted to lose herself for a little while, and anyone halfway attractive and halfway nice would have done, and it just happened that he was who was available? If she'd ended up at a bar instead of here, would she have gone home with whoever bought her drinks and chatted her up and didn't seem like the aforementioned serial killer?

"Glad to hear it," Clarke said. "I just... I don't know."

"Blame it on the a-a-a-alco-alcohol?" Octavia asked, and Clarke could hear her grinning. 

"I could," Clarke said. "We were drinking. But like you said, I'm not that much of a lightweight, and I'm not that stupid. And Finn knows that. I'm pretty sure he does, anyway."

"He didn't, like, slip anything into your drink, right?" Octavia asked. "I mean, you are absolutely positive that you—"

"I'm absolutely positive that I went to bed with him of my own free will," Clarke said. "I wasn't _that_ drunk. I'm not even really hungover. Which is good. Because I am pretty sure that throwing eggnog... or liquor that tastes like eggnog, I don't think there was actually eggs in it... would be even more disgusting than drinking it in the first place."

"And you used protection?" Octavia asked. 

"Yes. Always."

"Okay. Good. Then I'm pretty sure that we can downgrade it from a 'huge' mistake to just a mistake. And maybe not even a mistake? I mean... Finn's a nice guy. Bellamy likes him. Mostly. Most of the time. But I'm pretty sure that you can't like someone you live with all of the time. It's just not possible."

"Hey!" Clarke laughed. "I resemble that remark." Because it was true. She liked her roommate – loved her, even, in a sisterly way – but there were times when they drove each other crazy. Like for all that she couldn't disagree with Octavia that 8 am while on break was an ungodly hour, she was still definitely more of a morning person than Octavia was (and therefore usually went to bed earlier) and Octavia's tendency to come home close to midnight with a paper due by noon the next day that she hadn't even started was enough to drive Clarke insane. 

"So maybe it's not a mistake, is my point," Octavia said. "Y'know? Maybe it's just—"

But whatever it was maybe just got lost as Clarke got distracted by a knock at the door... or more precisely, a voice at the door saying, "Knock knock."

"O? I gotta go. I'll call you later," Clarke said, and then hung up without waiting for a response (she would probably get several disgruntled text messages about that in the near future) and went to the door wrapped only in a blanket from the bed because it would have taken too long to find her clothes, and opened it.

"You don't have to—" she started to say, but then realized that the reason Finn had knocked (other than maybe to give her the chance to get decent) was because he was holding a tray and didn't have a free hand to open the door himself. 

"Rise and shine, Sleeping Beauty," he said. 

"Hold on," she said, and shut the door again. She found her jeans and t-shirt and underwear, pulling them on and trying not to think about the fact that they were definitely not clean, and opened the door again once she was dressed. 

He gave her a look that clearly said that he thought she was ridiculous for feeling the need to get dressed when they had already seen everything of each other that there was to see (he was wearing only boxers and an apron, so she was pretty sure he was in no position to judge regarding ridiculousness), and stepped past her into the room. "You're supposed to stay in bed," he said. "Breakfast in bed and all that?"

"How am I supposed to stay in bed when you knocked on the door to have me come open it?" she asked. 

Finn looked at her – really looked at her – and grinned. "You _may_ have a point," he said. "Anyway, get back into bed."

It wasn't quite a command, but it wasn't quite _not_ a command, and it rubbed Clarke the wrong way. But there wasn't actually anywhere else to sit, and considering the fact that he'd gone to the trouble of making breakfast for her in the first place, it seemed rude to refuse it, or to make him take the tray back down to the kitchen to eat there. So she compromised and sat down on the bed with her back to the wall, legs stretched out in front of her, and let him settle the tray over her lap. 

"Thank you," she said, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. "You didn't have to."

"I know," Finn said. "I wanted to." He sat next to her, removing one of the plates from the tray for himself and starting to eat. "I woke up and you were still asleep and I didn't want to disturb you, and after the day you had yesterday, I thought maybe you would appreciate a little extra TLC this morning."

Again, there was something about the words, something about the look in his eyes, that put Clarke slightly on edge, but he was being nice, right? Still, what came out of her mouth after she'd swallowed a bite of waffle (fresh from the toaster and drenched in that stuff that they called 'table syrup' because they couldn't actually call it maple) was, "You do know that in the original story, the prince raped Sleeping Beauty, right? That she woke up because he was fucking her? The 'true love's kiss' thing is Disney bullshit."

Finn's eyebrows shot up. "Wow, way to kill the mood, princess," he said. "And no, I didn't know that."

"Yeah," Clarke said. "The original fairy tales are really dark. Like in Cinderella, in order to try and fit their foot into the slipper and prove that they were the girl that the prince was looking for, one of her stepsisters cut off her toes and the other sliced off her heel." 

"You _are_ aware that we're eating, right?" Finn asked, and when Clarke looked at him he actually did look like he'd gone a bit pale. "That normal people don't talk about people cutting parts of themselves off as normal mealtime conversation?"

"They don't?" Clarke asked, feigning innocence, trying to turn it all into a joke because she was probably being too sensitive about all of this, too harsh. "I guess I'm not normal people, then. Probably comes from having a doctor for a mother. Not much was off limits at the dinner table."

"That's what you're going to school for too, isn't it?" Finn asked. "Pre-Med."

"Yeah," Clarke agreed. "For now, anyway." It wasn't that she didn't want to become a doctor... just that she wasn't her mother's biggest fan at the moment and maybe following in her footsteps wasn't the best decision. But she liked helping people, and had always been fascinated by what her mother did, and just because she was pissed at her wasn't a reason to give up on something she was passionate about, right?

"Well, you've still got time to figure it out," Finn said. "Unlike me. I need to declare a major, like... now? And I still don't know."

Clarke was pretty sure that that was an invitation for more conversation, for her to ask him what he was interested in, what path he thought he might follow, etc., but she focused on her attention on her food instead, and finally the weight in the air between them eased, and they finished the meal in more-or-less comfortable silence.

"I'll do the dishes," Clarke said, and gathered them up before Finn could get any ideas about what they might do in the bed together instead.

Because maybe she hadn't made a _huge_ mistake, but she was still undecided about whether she wanted it to be anything more than a one night stand, and sitting here with him looking at her with those big puppy dog eyes wasn't helping her think straight about it. 

"I'll be here," Finn said. 

_I know,_ Clarke thought. _That's what I'm afraid of._


	4. Lexa

Lexa woke up when the car stopped moving. She hadn't even realized that she'd fallen asleep (did anyone ever actually know when they'd fallen asleep? was that even possible?) but the cessation of the vibrations, the lulling hum, was enough to jerk her back into wakefulness.

"We're here," Anya said, looking over at her and smiling. 

"Where's here?" Lexa asked, stifling a yawn. 

"Home," Anya said. "Come on." She got out and shut the door, plunging the inside of the car into darkness, and Lexa couldn't find the latch on the inside to let herself out, and she was staring to panic when Anya came around and opened it from the outside, then calmly reached over her to release her seatbelt. Lexa would have been embarrassed if she hadn't been so far past the point of caring about anything.

... Or at least that's what she tried to tell herself. 

Her legs felt numb, not quite like they'd fallen asleep but like they weren't quite part of her body, either, and it wasn't a nice feeling. Maybe she'd just been sitting too long, or maybe all of those hours on the plane had made her develop some kind of blood clot, and now it was migrating through her body, getting ready to kill her. 

Which would suck. Not for her, but for Anya. Anya didn't deserve to have to deal with waking up to a dead body in her house. Or, she guessed, if she caught it early enough (would Lexa tell her?) spending hours or days in the hospital with her, because Lexa had no doubt that she would, and it was more than she deserved, but telling Anya not to do a thing was pretty much a guarantee that she would do it, so there was no point in trying to send her away...

... from the theoretical hospital bed that Lexa wasn't in. She scrubbed at her face with her hands, trying to rub some feeling, some _something_ back into herself. 

"Damn, it's cold," she muttered, rummaging in her pockets for gloves that she knew she wouldn't find. It had been summer when she left Australia, and now here it was, just a few days past the winter solstice (so she'd missed the longest night of the year – thank whatever wasn't out there for small favors) and she knew that it was probably a lot colder in other areas of the country right now but it felt plenty cold enough for her in her lightweight jacket.

"It's warm inside," Anya said, heaving her suitcase out of the trunk. "Grab your backpack and come inside." 

"Inside _where_?" Lexa asked, because no matter how many times Anya said it, it didn't make sense. This wasn't a hotel, and it wasn't a dorm. It was... an apartment building? A condo? She had no idea. How far had they traveled? Where _were_ they? Was this Anya's home? With her family? 

"Just come inside," Anya repeated, exasperation creeping into her voice. 

So Lexa grabbed her backpack and followed her through the front door. Inside there was a flight of stairs up, and then a door to the left and to the right. Anya turned left and stuck her key into the lock, twisting it and pushing open, then stepping aside to let Lexa past, probably figuring (and probably not wrong) that she might need to nudge Lexa past the threshold. 

"Where are we?" Lexa asked, looking around. There was a big comfy couch and a coffee table, a TV mounted on the wall above a fireplace. The walls were painted some sort of neutral color that in the dim lighting could have been brownish or grayish or maybe even blueish (was blue a neutral? could it be? navy was considered neutral for clothing, wasn't it? but did the same rules apply to home décor?) and the furniture (other than the couch, which was dark) was medium-toned wood, nice enough that Lexa was pretty sure it wasn't from IKEA (not that there was anything wrong with IKEA, but this didn't look like a place that had been thrown together from whatever could be had cheap). 

The space opened to a kitchen area with a small table off to one side, all of it kind of blending together into one big room, and Lexa tried not to think about all of the floorplans that _she_ had drawn of their future place together, all 'open floor plan' and 'natural lighting' and all of the other buzzword catchphrases she'd picked up from binges of HGTV. (The only show that Lexa had ever really cared for was House Hunters: International, but even that had often driven her crazy with how the dumb Americans wanted other countries to _be_ America.) 

Anya flipped on a light, and the place came to life. Lexa tipped her head, trying to bury her face against her own shoulder in the sudden glare, and she felt Anya's hand on her back. "Sorry. I should have warned you." She prodded her gently forward so that she could shut and lock the door behind them. "Welcome home."

The words still didn't make sense to her, and maybe she was more sleep deprived than she thought, or maybe... maybe she was just losing it. Maybe she really was having some kind of stroke or something. 

"Let me show you your room," Anya said. She left the suitcase where it was, and led Lexa down a short hall. "Bathroom is here," she said, pointing to a door on the left, "and your room is here." She pushed open the door directly across from it and reached in to flip on the switch so Lexa could see. "I had to guess at decorating," she said. "If you hate it, we can change it. But I couldn't let you come home to nothing."

Lexa looked around, trying to take it all in, trying to process the whole 'your room' thing, because it didn't make sense. She didn't have a room. She lived in the dorms. Or she would, if she went back to school, which was still a big if because she wasn't sure she could face walking into the same buildings, sitting down in the same dining hall, that she had once frequented with _her_ at her side. They had been a pair, a unit, a single entity said all in one breath, and everyone they knew – had known, past tense, because they didn't exist anymore, because you couldn't be a singular they (well, you could, and that was fine if that was the pronoun that you preferred, but that wasn't the situation here, this was two people turned into one person, but not even a whole person, this was one half of a whole left to fend for herself against a world that expected duality, not singularity) – everyone they had known would look at her and see the empty space beside her and she couldn't, she _couldn't_ handle the looks, the condolences, any of it, which was why she'd gone away in the first place and why she almost hadn't come back.

She let herself get lost in the details rather than in her own thoughts, trying to take it all in but it was too much, and so she just let her gaze wander from one detail to the next: walls – pale cloud gray, bedspread – darker gray, heavy-looking, down?, sheets – sage green, looked high quality but could you tell that just by looking?, furniture – dark wood, but not too dark, still clearly brown and couldn't be mistaken for black, rug – some kind of subtle geometric pattern in shades of gray, floor – hardwood, also dark, but somehow all of it added together didn't seem dark or heavy. It felt light, welcoming. There wasn't much on the walls, just one framed picture over the desk that was in the corner, and it took a minute for Lexa to recognize it as one of her own photographs, taken in the forest when they'd gone for a hike and it had started to pour almost out of nowhere, and after it passed the trees had been coated in sort of a mist of water droplets that she'd only managed to successfully capture in a few shots. This was one of them, and blown up and hanging there, it left her staring at its beauty all over again.

She knew Anya had chosen that picture specifically, out of all of the ones she'd taken and shared with her friend, because of the circumstances of that day. They hadn't gone hiking alone, but it had been just the two of them that day. _She_ hadn't been there. And maybe that could have made Lexa think about the fact that any hikes she took from now on would be like that day, without _her_ , but... it had been a good day. And that's what Anya had gambled on, she figured. That it would remind her that good days were possible, even now. 

"It's perfect," she said. 

"I'm glad," Anya said. "Are you hungry?"

Lexa shrugged. She still wasn't great about recognizing her body's signals; it was like her entire nervous system had short-circuited seven months ago, and it still wasn't fully back on line. There was a disconnect between the meat-suit she inhabited and her mind where she lived pretty much all the time, whether she wanted to or not, and she couldn't figure out how (and hadn't really tried) to reconnect the two.

"Come on," Anya said. "I'm hungry."

Lexa left her backpack on the floor in the room – her room? – and followed Anya back out. "That's my room there," she said, pointing the door at the end of the hall (which was only a few steps away). "I have my own bathroom so we don't have to share. You'll have to share with any guests, though."

Not that guests were likely. At least not for Lexa. 

"Okay," she said. "This... you live here?"

"Yes," Anya said, and Lexa wondered when her patience with Lexa's apparent inability to put two and two together and get four would end. Hopefully she just blamed the long trip, and the jet lag. Hopefully she wasn't wrong. "Grad students don't get to live in the dorms, so... I had to find a place."

"How...?" Lexa remembered Anya telling her once that she'd become an RA mostly because she needed the free housing. How could she afford this place? 

"Friend of a friend," Anya said. "She's away for the next year at least, doing relief work in Nepal and then from there she's thinking about teaching abroad. She doesn't want to sell the place, but she doesn't want it to just sit empty, either, so it worked for both of us." She shrugged and began to open cabinets, pulling out a pot. "How does pasta sound?"

"I'll pay rent," Lexa said. "I'm not going to—"

"Let's worry about all of that later," Anya said. "Tomorrow, at the earliest. After you've eaten and slept. Okay?"

"Okay," Lexa acquiesced. "Pasta sounds good."

"Great. There's asparagus in the fridge. Grab it and start cutting it into maybe two inch pieces. Cutting board is in the cabinet all the way to the right, knives are in the block by the stove."

Lexa found herself obeying the instructions without thinking, and honestly, it was a relief. Soon the kitchen was filled with good smells, and at least for a little while, she felt almost, a little bit, okay.


	5. Clarke

Clarke finally called Octavia back a little before noon. Her hope was that her friend would have gone back to sleep and when she woke up again decide that it had all been some kind of really weird dream, and forget all about it. 

She wasn't that lucky.

"So," Octavia said when she picked up the phone, "you never actually explained _why_ you've suddenly decided to shack up with Finn."

Clarke sighed. "Do we really have to have this conversation?" she asked. "Now?"

"Is there a better time to have it?" Octavia asked. "Like, say, eight o'clock in the morning on the day after Christmas?"

"Boxing Day," Clarke said, then laughed softly. "Which is pretty much what it feels like at this point – like I've gone three rounds... ten rounds? How many rounds are in a boxing match?"

"I have no idea," Octavia said. "BELL!"

Clarke had to jerk the phone away from her ear as Octavia called out to her older brother... who was probably close enough that she could have talked to him without shouting, unless maybe he was in his room with the music cranked up or something. The house wasn't that big. "Jesus, O, you could warn a person," she grumbled, but Octavia wasn't listening. 

"How many rounds are in a boxing match?" Octavia asked. Clarke heard a mumbled reply in the background, and then Octavia was back. "Twelve, apparently," she said. "Why do you feel like you're in a boxing match?"

"Because I have to keep dodging your jabs," Clarke said. "And Finn's, for that matter." Although he hadn't really tried to pry too much. He was more the kind of person who gave you Meaningful Looks until you decided to spill your guts to him. The stereotypical (or maybe quintessential? she read a lot but an English major she was not) Nice Guy who Always Finished Last, or whatever. (Wasn't that a Green Day song? But it had to pre-date that, didn't it?) 

"Should I be worried?" Octavia asked, and although the lightness in her voice made it sound like a joke. Clarke knew that it wasn't, really, and that if she said anything bad about Finn, anything at all... or at least anything at all about the way that he treated her... he would have Octavia to contend with, and although she looked pretty tiny, she was tough. (Wasn't there a Shakespeare quote about that?) 

"No," Clarke said. "Nothing like that."

"Okay," Octavia said. "Because, y'know, I'm totally cool with everyone doing their own thing behind closed doors, but if you're not into what he's into..."

"Not everything is about sex," Clarke said. 

"No," Octavia replied, "but your relationship with Finn is. At least it is at this point. Unless you sat down and had some kind of heart-to-heart bonding session since you talked to me this morning?"

"No," Clarke said. "He just... made me breakfast. That's why I hung up. He came back to the room and I just... didn't want him to know I was talking about him, I guess." She wasn't sure _why_ she'd hung up, really, except that it seemed rude under the circumstances not to. 

"That's cute," Octavia said. "Can he cook?"

"Does bacon and Eggos count?" Clarke asked.

"Bacon and eggs? Sure," Octavia said. "It's more than Bellamy can manage."

"Not eggs," Clarke said. "Eggos. The waffles that you make in the toaster?"

"Oh. Um... not sure about that. I mean, you probably won't starve if you can operate a toaster and keep a sufficient supply of things to stick in it, but if it was me, I would go for the upgraded model with a little bit more culinary ambition. Especially when he's supposed to be trying to impress me."

"Is that what he's trying to do? Impress me?" Clarke wasn't so sure. Maybe he just thought it was the decent thing to do. Maybe he was just hungry and thought it would be rude not to make her some as well. But yeah, maybe Octavia had a point. Not that Clarke would admit it; it would go straight to her roommate's head.

"I would assume so," Octavia said. "We all know he likes you. Like, _likes_ you likes you."

Clarke snorted. "What are we, twelve?"

That earned her a laugh. "He's liked you from the beginning. He was never interested in me. Never even looked at me, really, even though I am _clearly_ the hot roommate."

"Wow." Clarke laughed too. "Did it ever occur to you that Bellamy might have warned his brothers that you were coming, and if anyone so much as looked at you sideways, he would make sure that they were incapable of ever doing anything, including looking, again? That maybe trying to get with the sister of your brother is basically incest, but the roommate of your brother's sister is totally fair game?"

"Nah," Octavia said. "Someone who was _really_ into me wouldn't be intimidated by anything Bell said or did. His bark is way worse than his bite, anyway. I'm the one you have to watch out for. 'And though she be but little, she is fierce.'" 

That was it! That was the quote. At least one of them had paid attention in English class. 

"Right," Clarke said. "Anyway, fine, maybe he was trying to impress me. I don't know why, considering that he'd already gotten what guys are always looking for."

"Unless he's looking for a repeat performance," Octavia said. "Like I said, he _likes_ \--"

"I got it, O. Believe me."

"So maybe he wants to actually, like, date you," Octavia said. "Maybe he wants to take you to the movies and sit in the back row and make out with you. Maybe he wants to buy you dinner and flowers and chocolate on Valentine's Day. Maybe he wants to be sittin' in a—"

"Are you really, seriously..." Clarke started to say, but stopped when she heard that Octavia was laughing. "It's good that one of us thinks you're funny," she said. 

"Admit it," Octavia said. "You love me. But not—"

"Don't," Clarke said, and the word came out sharper than maybe she meant it to, but at the same time, she was getting sick of Octavia's teasing. She hadn't called back because she wanted to trade banter, although there was a comfort in it, because it meant she didn't have to talk about the things that she didn't want to talk about. But it also didn't help her with her immediate problem which was what the hell was she supposed to do now?

"Okay," Octavia said. She didn't apologize, and Clarke didn't expect her to. But she did stop, and that was what mattered. "So... let's go back to the beginning of this conversation. Why are you there in the first place? You went home for break, or at least I thought you did."

"I did," Clarke said. "I just... couldn't stay there. It was too weird."

"Because your dad is gone?" Octavia asked. 

"No," Clarke said. "I'm used to that." Or as she was as used to it as it felt like she would ever get, which wasn't very used to it at all. She wasn't sure that it was really possible to get used to the idea that the person who had been your best friend and jungle gym and tutor and cheerleader and hand-holder and tear-wiper for the first, what? eighty? ninety? percent of your life to date was gone and wouldn't be around to see the rest of it. She was pretty sure that it was _im_ possible to go back to the place where all of that had happened and not keep expecting to see them come around the corner or be at the sink washing dishes (even though they had a dishwasher, her dad had always said he found washing the dishes calming, and a great place to get some thinking in) or sitting in their recliner when you went into the living room. 

"Then what?"

"My mom... I told you that she was dating?"

"I think you mentioned it," Octavia said. "Or that you thought she was, but she wasn't telling you?"

"Yeah," Clarke said. "Well, she definitely is. Like, really definitely."

"Okay..." Octavia drew the word out, turning it into a question, waiting for Clarke to fill in the blanks.

"I think maybe he lives there with her," Clarke said. "I think she didn't tell me, and they're, like, hiding it from me because they didn't want to upset me. Which, whatever, fine, do what you want, what do I care, right? But at least have guts to tell me to my face instead of just letting me... find out."

Silence, and then Octavia said, "That sucks."

"No shit." 

Another silence, and then, "Do you want to come here?"

"I can't do that to you," Clarke said. "Not again."

"You're not doing anything to me," Octavia said. "I'm asking. I'm inviting you. And you make it sound like a bigger deal than it is. I mean, I know that it was a little cramped at Thanksgiving, but this time you can have Bellamy's room instead of the couch. I'll even make him clean it and change the sheets."

"I'm not taking your brother's room," Clarke said. "Where is he going to sleep?"

"He's going back to school tomorrow. He can't miss any more work," Octavia said. "So he's not even going to be here. He won't mind, will you, Bell?" A muffled conversation ensued, and then some rustling.

"I don't mind," Bellamy said. "Okay?"

Clarke wasn't sure if he was asking her or Octavia. "Okay," she replied, just in case. 

Then Octavia was back on the line. "I knew you wouldn't believe it unless you heard it from him directly, so there you go. The official Bellamy Blake stamp of approval. So get your butt over here. We have so many leftovers and they are not going to eat themselves."

"Are you sure your mom will be okay with it?" Clarke asked.

There was a pause, and Clarke almost thought she could hear Octavia shrug. "My mom is pretty okay with everything right now," she said. "Just... come, okay? I promise we'll have fun. And I promise about the sheets, too."

"Okay," Clarke said. She wasn't sure if it was really the best idea, but she didn't have a better one. Staying here with Finn definitely wasn't it, because the longer she stayed the more he might think, might decide, that this was more than it was. Or maybe he wouldn't think that, or maybe it _was_ more than it was (okay, that didn't make sense) but whatever it was or wasn't and whatever he was or wasn't thinking about it, she needed a little space to figure it out.

"So you're coming?" Octavia said.

"Yes."

"Right now?"

"If you want," Clarke said.

"I want."

"Then I'll see you soon."


	6. Lexa

She'd stayed up the night before until she was almost delirious from lack of sleep, and Anya had insisted that she go to bed before she fell asleep on the couch, because she didn't know how to get drool out of upholstery. Lexa hadn't even bothered to get out of her clothes; she'd just flopped down on top of the bed and pulled the throw blanket folded up at the bottom of it over herself. Anything more was too much effort.

Her sleep was dark and dreamless, at least for a little while, but two hours later she was awake again, her heart pounding, absolutely certain that something horrible was about to happen, or had just happened, or...

Or maybe she had just had a nightmare that had been completely erased from her memory as soon as she opened her eyes.

Or maybe she was living in one.

At least she hadn't woken up screaming, although she was pretty sure that that was something that they played up more in movies than actually happened. Wasn't there a TV trope about that? Catapult nightmare or something? She could look it up, but she hadn't gotten the wifi password so she couldn't get online on her laptop, and her phone was still set up for Australia, she was pretty sure, and she didn't need _those_ data charges.

She managed to wriggle under the covers (she would have wondered about who the hell made a bed this tight, but one of the first things that she and Anya had bonded over, way back during her freshman orientation last year, was the fact that they were both from military families, so she knew that it was the kind of programming that you didn't easily escape) and after scrolling through some of the pictures on her phone, trying to remember what the sun on her skin and the sand between her toes had felt like and realizing that it was already fading into memories that felt like more dream than reality. 

Finally she put on an audiobook, and the deep, somewhat droning voice of the narrator eased her back into sleep. 

When she woke again, it was nearing dawn, but not quite there yet. She hadn't slept enough; that much she knew. She wasn't sure that there was such a thing as enough sleep for her anymore. She wanted to sleep forever, but her body only allowed her a few hours at a time, when she could sleep at all, and it had gotten to a point where she was so deep in sleep debt that she probably ought to be starting to lose her mind by now.

If she hadn't already.

She cracked open her bedroom door, careful to be as quiet as possible as she crossed the hall to the bathroom, making sure that the door was shut and locked behind her before she turned on the light and tried to avoid looking at herself in the mirror. She didn't want to see the dark circles under her eyes, the ashen cast to her skin under the unavoidable tan (although really, she was still pale compared to most of the people she'd known there), the way that her pupils had become black holes into which one could sink and never return, and not in any kind of good way.

She did what she had to do, then went back across the hall, dragging her suitcase (which Anya had thoughtfully left beside her door) in after her and sorting through it until she found what she was looking for. It probably wouldn't be warm enough, but needs must and all of that. She would create her own heat, anyway, eventually.

So she dressed and found a fleece in the hall closet that wasn't hers, but Anya wasn't so much bigger than her (really only a little taller, and no broader) that it made any difference. She was sure her friend wouldn't mind her borrowing it. She reached for her keys on the set of hooks by the door, only then realizing that she didn't have a set of keys, nor would there necessarily be key hooks there.

Except there was, and she did. She knew they were hers because there was a little LED flashlight keychain attached with her name on it. (Which had to have been special made, because her name was never on anything, ever.) So she grabbed them and stuffed them into her pocket, and then went out the door, shutting it softly behind her and locking it.

She didn't know the neighborhood, so she would have to pay close attention to where she was going, or she might not know how to find her way back. Luckily, a lifetime of rarely living in one place for more than a year, a year and a half if she was lucky, had made her pretty adept at learning a new place quickly. A brisk walk turned into a slow jog, and she realized that the area wasn't as unfamiliar as she'd thought. They were a little outside of town, but they were near enough campus that she recognized things, and that made her a little bolder, and she forced herself to a faster pace, still keeping mostly to straight lines just in case, but relaxing into it and letting her stride eat the distance.

She'd lost herself in the rhythm of it, the wind brushing her cheeks, the rasp of her breath as her lungs tried to process air much colder than anything she'd had to breathe in a long time, the slap of her feet on the pavement, when she suddenly became aware of another set of footsteps, behind her, following at a distance and making no effort to catch up or pass her. 

She kept running. The person, whoever it was, kept following. Just one person, light on their feet, their breathing not any more strained than her own from what she could hear. It might just be another person out for a morning job who happened to be following the same route that she was. 

It might not.

She turned left, jogging across the road without looking (it was the day after Christmas, who would be out on the roads at this hour?) and it allowed her to catch a glimpse out of the corner of her eye of whoever was following her.

Anya waved, and it was all Lexa could do not to scream at her as all of the adrenaline that had been dumped into her system as soon as she realized she was being followed released, leaving her feeling weak and queasy in its wake almost instantly. 

"Why are you following me?" Lexa demanded when Anya finally caught up to her (because she'd stopped moving and not started again, and she hadn't tried to just jog on past the place where Lexa had turned and pretend like she hadn't been following her in the first place). 

"I heard you get up," Anya said. "I decided that maybe a jog wasn't such a bad idea."

"But why are you _following_ me?" Lexa asked. 

"I thought maybe you would want some space," Anya said. "Some time alone with your thoughts. You've never really been much of a morning person."

"According to my internal clock," Lexa said, "It's about nine o'clock at night." 

"Really?" Anya asked. 

Lexa shrugged. "Yes and no. It's all screwed up right now." _And I'm not an any time of day person anymore, and you trying to pretend that I am isn't going to change that._ But she didn't say that, because Anya was just trying to help. All Anya had been doing since everything happened at the beginning of the summer was help. But Lexa didn't need help. (Or she didn't want it, and she tried to pretend that that was the same thing.) She needed to be left alone, and she would figure it out. 

Part of her wanted to try to push Anya away, to figure out what she could do or say that would make her just give up and move on... but the rational part of her knew that she needed a place to stay, and getting herself kicked out of Anya's place was pretty much the worst possible thing she could do right now. Even going back to the dorms wasn't an option until classes started back up, and that wasn't for a couple of weeks.

"I would have thought you would have slept longer," Anya said.

She shrugged again. "Like I said, my internal clock is all screwed up."

"Hopefully it will get itself sorted out before classes," Anya said. She slowed her pace to match Lexa's, her long legs naturally propelling her a little farther with each step. Lexa wished she would keep her own pace, and she could push herself to keep up, but – or because – that would have meant that she wouldn't be able to keep up her end of the conversation. "You _did_ register for classes?"

"I registered," Lexa said. "You nagged me until I did, remember?"

"Would I do that?" Anya asked, and her smile (as rare as Lexa's own in most situations) should have been infectious, but Lexa couldn't unfreeze her face so instead she just stared straight ahead, her eyes on the sidewalk. "We should turn here," she said finally, when it became clear that Lexa wasn't going to respond. "It will take us on a loop through the park and back toward home."

So Lexa turned when Anya turned, and they made their way back in companionable enough silence, although it wasn't like it had been sometimes in the past, where they could sit together and not say a word, and afterward Lexa felt like they'd had a whole conversation. Now it was... something else. There wasn't tension between them, exactly, but... 

She didn't know. It didn't matter. Whatever it was, she couldn't change it. Better just to let it be. 

Anya unlocked the door, and they both kicked off their sneakers and lined them up carefully on the mat outside the door, and Lexa headed straight for the shower, even though she knew that she should probably let her body warm up gradually. She cranked up the water until it was as hot as she could stand, and then just stood under it, letting it roll down her cheeks, dripping into her ears and down her neck, tracing over her skin, and for a second she imagined it was fingers rather than water, and then she snapped open her eyes and shut off the water, because she was losing it, obviously she was losing it, and there was a part of her that wanted to just give in to that, to just let go and be gone, but she knew she couldn't. She wasn't allowed. It was the easy way out, and she was meant to suffer.

She deserved it. 

She'd earned every minute.


	7. Clarke

The drive to Octavia's felt long, longer than her trip from home back to campus, even though objectively she knew that that wasn't true. The Blakes lived about an hour from school; her mother was almost three hours away, although she'd done it in just over two, and maybe that was the difference – this time around she was actually paying at least a little bit of attention to the speed limit. Or maybe it was the fact that it always seemed to take longer to get to a place than to leave one? 

Whatever it was, it was all in her head, but she was still relieved when she pulled into the cracked asphalt driveway in front of the house that really seemed too small to hold three people. It wasn't a trailer (and don't call it that, or Octavia would have your head) but it was along the same lines, and Bellamy had joked (or maybe he wasn't joking) that if you looked really close you could see the line down the middle where two sides had been slapped together. Whatever the case, it had started out two bedrooms, and they'd had to put up a wall (which was paper-thin and not really securely anchored to anything, according to Octavia) down the middle of the larger bedroom to split it into two so that Bellamy and Octavia could each have a private space. 

Octavia came running out the door almost before Clarke had the engine switched off, and she threw her arms around Clarke. "You're here!" she said, grinning and bouncing on her toes. "Welcome back!"

"Thanks," Clarke said, hugging her back a little extra hard. "Thanks for having me."

"Of course," Octavia said. "What are friends for?"

_I don't know,_ Clarke thought. _I've never really had any._

But that was a lie. She'd had friends growing up. It had only been later that they'd started to fall away, and that wasn't really their fault, was it? It was hers. She had changed, and she had pushed a lot of people away in the aftermath of her father's death, and they had been all too relieved to go at that point, because no one wants to deal with that kind of grief. Or no one knows how, and the person doing the grieving doesn't have it in them to accommodate their fumbling attempts. Whatever the case, by the end of her junior year, she'd pretty much only had one friend left... and now she hadn't talked to him in months, and that was _definitely_ her fault.

_Maybe I ought to call him,_ she thought, but she honestly didn't know where he was right now. Had he come home for the holidays? He hadn't said anything if he had, and maybe he'd decided that it wasn't worth it. Sure, he would have wanted to see his dad, but maybe his dad had gone to see him instead. England was probably very picture-postcard Christmas-y this time of year. 

"Earth to Clarke?" Octavia was looking at her like she'd lost it, and Clarke wondered what she'd missed. 

"Sorry," Clarke said. "Just... thinking."

"We're on break," Octavia said. "No thinking allowed."

She smiled crookedly. "I wish it was that easy."

"It is," Octavia said, putting on her best vapid smile and flipping her hair. "Just, like, don't even worry about anything. Except, like, maybe, like, what color nail polish goes best with your little black dress? To tell guys that you're totally down, but like, not _too_ down?" She laughed, dropping back into her normal voice and demeanor. "It's cold. Let's go inside."

Inside they went. Clarke happened to notice the doorbell as they wrangled her bag through the door, and understood why Octavia had rushed out to meet her. The thing was definitely out of order, and if she had to guess, a hammer had been taken to it to make sure that no one could ring it ever again. 

Octavia grimaced and shrugged. "It wasn't a great day," she said. "You know how it goes."

Clarke didn't. Not in that way. Her mother was pretty much the sanest person that she knew. Even when she probably ought to have been going a little bit crazy, she was calm, cool, and collected. Which had led to more than one one-sided screaming match that had ended with Clarke feeling like an idiot because she couldn't get a rise out of her mother, couldn't get any kind of reaction beyond the mask that she'd carefully crafted to say, 'I'm Concerned About You, Clarke, and I'm Here For You if you need me.'

Which had only infuriated her more, and always ended with her stomping away, either to shut herself in her bedroom or to leave the house in frustration, walking or driving until she felt calm enough to go home again.

Octavia's mom was... well... She was a good person. She was even a good mom, Octavia said, at least when she was having a good day. Or an okay day. As long as she was taking her medication and as long as it was working, things were fine. It was just when it started to run out when she was on a downswing, or when money was tight and she decided that other things were more important, that things tended to get a little bit hairy. 

"Bell!" Octavia called. "Clarke's here!"

Bellamy appeared around the corner of the one hallway in the place and grinned, coming over and giving her a hug that it took her a second to relax into. Were they hugging people now? She guessed maybe she fell into the same little sister category for him as Octavia did, and unlike a lot of siblings that Clarke had known, who only barely tolerated each other, the Blakes were so close it was almost creepy at times. But then they'd been through a lot together, and although they were only four years apart, according to Octavia her older had played a big part in raising her... sometimes more than her mother did, back before she was diagnosed. So it kind of made sense.

"How are you?" Bellamy asked. "Happy belated Christmas." 

"Is that a thing?" Octavia asked.

"I'm okay," Clarke said. "Thank you for letting me come and stay, and use your room while you're not here. I just..."

"Hey, I understand," Bellamy said, and the look in his eyes said that maybe he did. Maybe he'd crashed with friends a time or two as well, when being at home got to be too much, although he never would have left Octavia behind, would he? "Mi casa es su casa." 

"Gracias."

Which was basically all the Spanish that she knew; she'd taken French in school. Which was probably a stupid decision, because Spanish would have been a lot more useful, especially if she'd kept it up. Being bilingual gave you a definite advantage in the hiring process pretty much anywhere that you went at this point.

"I'm not leaving until tomorrow, but you can have my room tonight," he said. "I don't mind the couch."

"I'm not going to put you out of your room," Clarke said. "I can sleep on the couch for a night. It's no big deal."

"You sure?" Bellamy asked. 

"I'm sure."

"Okay. Well, I'll put your bag in O's room for now, and you can move it tomorrow. My room is still kind of a mess anyway, but I'll have it clean by the time I leave."

"Don't worry about it," Clarke said. "I live with Octavia, remember?"

"I am _not_ messy!" Octavia objected. It was an argument that they'd had many times, and really, in the grand scheme of things, she was right. She wasn't that messy. She just had a tendency to let things build up over the course of the week, and then go on a whirlwind cleaning binge on Saturday after brunch, before they headed out for whatever weekend plans that they had. It wasn't Clarke's favorite system, but at least it was a system. And usually things weren't all over the floor... just piled and stacked and thrown on every surface. 

Once her things were settled, Octavia announced that it was lunchtime, and she began to get out leftovers from the fridge. "I know," she said, rolling her eyes. "Mom went a little bit overboard. But it's the first time in a while that she actually wasn't working on Christmas, you know? So she wanted to do it right, I guess. Which I guess to her means making enough food to feed a family three times the size of ours. But it was all really good, so dig in."

There was no kitchen table in the house; there was nowhere to put it. So they settled on the couch (and Bellamy in the coveted recliner that they called like shotgun) with TV trays, and put in a movie to watch to pass the time. Clarke knew that Octavia was itching to talk, but apparently she'd decided that eating was more important.

It was actually Bellamy who broke the silence, relegating the movie (which they'd all seen before anyway) to background noise. "So... decided you didn't want to shack up with Finn for the rest of break?" he asked.

"You _told_ him?" Clarke asked, glaring at Octavia, who only shrugged.

"He would have found out anyway," she said. "Boys talk."

"Finn's not—" She'd been about to say, 'Finn's not like that,' but what did she really know about him and what he was like? For all she knew, he was texting all of his buddies now, telling them all about the girl who had wanted him so bad she'd run away from home on Christmas to come spend the night with him, or some other crazy interpretation of the truth. 

"He's a good guy," Bellamy said. "You could do worse."

The implication being that maybe she could also do better, or at least that's how Clarke took it, but maybe she was misinterpreting boy-speak. (And how annoying was it that culture conditioned them to not just say what they meant? It happened just as much, if not more, to girls, but pretty much all of them, from the time they were born, were shoved into boxes and taught the right way to be a girl or a boy, and that girls couldn't be too assertive and boys weren't allowed to have feelings.) 

"Was he disappointed that you were leaving?" Octavia asked. "Did he give you puppy dog eyes, begging you to stay?"

"He didn't beg," Clarke said. But there might have been a little puppy eye action going on, if she was being honest. He'd mostly just said that she was welcome to stay if she wanted or needed to, and that she was welcome to come back if things at the Blakes got too tense or crowded. 

"His loss, then," Octavia said. "He should have begged."

"I wouldn't have stayed even if he had," Clarke said. "I'm just... not ready for that. Not right now."

"Whatever," Octavia said, but she was grinning. "I think you like him. Like _like_ h—"

She was cut off by a pillow hitting her from either side, and collapsed into laughter, but at least she shut up about it... for now, anyway. Clarke got the feeling that the silence wouldn't last.


	8. Lexa

"Coffee, tea, or hot chocolate?" Anya asked when Lexa finally emerged from her room, fully dressed and still wearing Anya's fleece even though temperature in the house was pretty comfortable. It looked like Anya had also taken a shower... good to know that there was enough hot water for both to run at the same time without one stealing all of it and without it running out. "It's not a world-altering decision," she added when Lexa didn't respond. 

"Whatever you're having," Lexa said, because really, it was, or it felt like it was. It felt like everything was burdened with some sort of memory that came back to her unbidden, and no matter what she chose, she would end up lost in it, so better to let someone else do the choosing. 

"Hot chocolate," Anya said. "With festive sprinkles."

"Festive...?" Lexa looked at her blankly, and Anya grinned. 

"I was working retail, which I was about as suited to as you are probably imagining, which is it say not at all. One day I was just having a worse day than usual, and so on the daily afternoon coffee run, one of my co-workers came back with hot chocolate for me, even though I hadn't asked for it. It was Christmastime, so it was mint-flavored, and it had whipped cream on top, and on that there were red sugar sprinkles. And I just... I must have been pretty punchy, because I got really excited about these 'festive' sprinkles, and I kind of never lived it down." She shrugged, still smiling. "So yes, festive sprinkles."

"Okay," Lexa said. She sat down on one of the stools at the breakfast bar, just watching Anya move around the kitchen, making their hot chocolate, and then turning her attention to breakfast. 

"You must be starving," Anya said. "You barely ate last night."

"I ate," Lexa said. She'd eaten a lot, or at least it felt like she had. Maybe it had only seemed that way because she had fallen into the bad habit of forgetting meals, and her stomach had finally resigned itself to being empty half the time and stopped sending signals to her brain. 

"Anyway, I've got quiche, if you want me to heat some of that up, or I can make eggs or something." She opened the refrigerator and peered in. "No buttermilk, so no pancakes."

"I didn't know you cooked," Lexa said. 

"I didn't know I did, either," Anya said. "But living on your own... school keeps me pretty busy, and being a TA and all of that, but not as busy as you might think? And my friends pretty much all graduated and moved on, and when you're not living in the dorms you just aren't around people all the time. And this place has a really nice kitchen, so I just..." She shrugged. "I figured I would give it a try. Turns out I don't suck."

Silence. Lexa knew she was meant to fill it, but no words rose up to fill in the gap, and this was why she'd spent most of her time during her semester abroad alone. She couldn't hold up her end of a conversation. 

"This is where you agree with me," Anya prompted. "Or better yet, tell me that I don't just not suck."

"You don't," Lexa said. "Suck. Or not suck. Or..." She shook her head. "I'm tired," she said. "I'm going back to bed."

"No," Anya said, "you're not. If you want to take a little nap later, okay, but if you're going to get back on a normal schedule – normal for here, I mean – going back to bed right now isn't going to help you. You need to eat."

"You're not my father," Lexa said. "You're not – you don't get to tell me what to do."

"Someone has to," Anya said, and it was the first real frustration that she'd let show since picking Lexa up from the airport, and really since longer ago than that. "You're barely functioning. Maybe it's the jet lag. Maybe it's being back at school. I don't know what's going on in your head, Lexa, but from what I've seen, you've pretty much completely forgotten how to take care of yourself, so yes, I _do_ get to tell you what to do, until you show me that you're capable of figuring it out for yourself."

She should leave. Lexa knew she should leave, because this wasn't... this wasn't how things were supposed to be, and this wasn't going to be good for either one of them, and it definitely wasn't going to be good for their friendship. If it could even be called that anymore. If they'd ever been friends in the first place. 

She scrubbed at her face, pushing the heels of her hands into her eyes until she saw stars. She didn't move because she felt frozen in place, like even if she'd commanded her limbs to move, to carry her out of here and back to her room, or out the door, they wouldn't have obeyed. 

"Drink this," Anya said, putting a mug that overflowed with whipped cream and yes, red sugar sprinkles, in front of her. "Lexa." 

She didn't move. She couldn't move. It was like she was trying to wait out a T-Rex, and any movement that she made would draw its attention and lead to a sudden, painful death. 

"Damn it, Lexa," Anya snapped. She reached across the counter and pried her hands away from her face, wrapping them around the mug. "Drink it." Then, more gently, her hands still over Lexa's, so that warmth bled into them through the ceramic of the mug and through Anya's skin as well, she said, "I know it feels like there will never be anything good in the world again. I know it feels like you will never be happy again. You're being attacked by Dementors, and the life – the soul – is being sucked out of you. You know what helps with that? Chocolate. So drink. _Please._ "

Lexa drank, and maybe it was the sugar or maybe it was the warmth or maybe it was the fact that Anya wasn't going to give up on her at the first (second, tenth, hundredth) sign of trouble, but she did start to feel better. "Did you just... Harry Potter at me?"

"Maybe," Anya said. "A little."

Lexa felt the corner of her mouth quirking up, and it felt out of place on her face, an expression that she'd forgotten she was capable of making. It wasn't quite a smile, but it was the beginnings of one. "What kind of quiche?" she asked.

"Quiche Lorraine. So ham and cheese, basically."

"Okay," Lexa said. 

"Okay," Anya agreed, and she put it in the oven to heat back up. Lexa sipped her cocoa, and when Anya put a big slice of the egg pie (because really, make it sound as fancy and French as you wanted, but that's what it was) in front of her, she ate it. And when that one was gone, she ate another, and Anya smiled at her, and she still couldn't quite manage a whole smile back, but at least it was starting to feel a little bit like it might be possible at some point in the future.

As soon as she was back in her room, though, as soon as she was alone, she remembered that she had no right to smile, that she was _supposed_ to be miserable, because _she_ was gone, and that was Lexa's fault. Directly or indirectly, it didn't matter. It was her fault, and she had to live with that, and letting herself feel normal... letting herself pretend, even for a minute, that life could go back to being at least somewhat okay... 

She opened her door again, because it was too cold to open a window (and they still hadn't discussed rent and bills and she didn't want to drive up the heating bill because she decided she needed air). "How am I going to get my winter stuff?" she asked, not because she expected Anya to have an answer but because forcing the air from her lungs to form words made her feel a little bit less like she was choking. 

"Did you look in your drawers?" Anya asked. "And your closet?"

"No," Lexa said. 

"Look."

So she looked, and there was everything, all of her clothing that she'd thought she'd left – no, she _knew_ she'd left it with her father, because that's where she'd been for the summer, and she'd left for Australia from the nearest airport, and she hadn't even thought about it until now. 

"Did you...?" She looked at Anya, frowning. 

"I already knew I had this place," Anya said. "After you left, I talked to your father, and he agreed that the best course of action for when you came back was for you to move in with me, so I packed up all of your things and brought them back with me. I got a rental car and drove rather than flying. Did a little sightseeing along the way. A little cliché, maybe, road trip after graduation and all, but..." She shrugged. "I didn't bother doing the math to see if it was cheaper than flying and paying for the extra checked bags and shipping to get stuff here."

"Thank you," Lexa said, because what else was there to say? She wasn't going to think about what the conversation between Anya and her father must have been like, because she didn't want to imagine her life being talked about like a business transaction, but that was probably how it had gone down, because that was just how her father was, and Anya knew how to speak military. 

"You're welcome," Anya said. 

"But then you..." Lexa frowned, feeling like things weren't quite adding up. "If this isn't your place... your friend was okay with you... with me moving in?"

"She was okay with the idea of me getting a roommate, yes," Anya said. "And she was okay – more than okay – with the idea of me fixing up the second bedroom. She said she'd been planning to use it as a guest bedroom and office when she got back, so now it's all set up for that. I sent her pictures. She was pleased with how it came out."

"Okay," Lexa said. "I'm going to unpack."

"Let me know if you need anything," Anya said. 

"I will," Lexa said. This time she didn't shut her door all the way, and when she heard the TV switch on she was glad for the background noise. At least for now, it was just loud enough to block out the static in her head.


	9. Clarke

They were just settling in for dinner (more leftovers, and as many as there had seemed to be, it was pretty clear that with three of them eating them, they weren't going to last long) and another movie when Ms. Blake came home. She looked at the three of them in the living room with their TV trays and for a second she didn't seem to process what she was seeing. Then her eyes went back to Clarke and stayed there. "Clarke," she said. "What a pleasant surprise!"

"Hi," Clarke said. "Thanks for letting me stay for a few days."

"Of course," she said. "Of course." And then she continued on her way, looking slightly bewildered, but at least she didn't look annoyed? Unless she was just good at hiding it.

As soon as she had disappeared behind her bedroom door, though, Clarke reached over and punched Octavia in the arm. "What the heck did she mean, 'what a pleasant surprise'?"

"Ow." Octavia rubbed her arm, mock-wounded, but Clarke knew that she hadn't hit her that hard. "I'm pretty sure she meant that she was pleasantly surprised to see you here. Which generally means that she was possibly slightly unaware that she would be seeing you, but she's glad that she is, now that you're here."

"You told me that she was okay with it!" Clarke hissed, not wanting Ms. Blake to overhear. 

"Did I?" Octavia shrugged. "Well, she is, isn't she?"

"But she didn't know I was coming," Clarke persisted. "You made it sound like you'd already told her, and she'd agreed."

"Did I?" Clarke could see that Octavia was fighting back a smile, and it made her want to take her roommate by the shoulders and shake her. "I guess I must have meant to say that she _would be_ okay with it, and I just mixed up my words."

"You didn't mix up anything," Clarke said. "You didn't tell her because you weren't sure that she _would_ say yes, but you knew that if I was already here, she wouldn't make me leave."

"Maybe," Octavia admitted. "Is that so wrong?"

"Yes," Clarke said. "It's wrong. It's lying."

"Lying-ish," Octavia said. "I prefer to call it a slight variation on the truth. Anyway, you're here and she's fine with it, so just don't worry about it. She's barely even here, so she'll hardly notice."

"Except for the part where there's nowhere for her to sit out here with me here," Clarke pointed out.

"She's got a TV in her room," Octavia said. "She's barely out here anyway."

"That's true," Bellamy chimed in. "When she gets home from work, she usually just goes straight to her room. Sometimes she grabs dinner first, or sometimes she comes out and gets it later."

"You still should have told her," Clarke said, looking at both of them. "That's not fair. It's her house."

"It's _our_ house," Octavia said. "We live here, too."

"And we've helped pay the bills and rent more than once," Bellamy said, "before you say that she's the one who pays for everything. She's not."

"I wasn't going to say that," Clarke said. Because she knew that it wasn't true. Octavia had told her that being at school, as much as it could get crazy when there was suddenly two papers and a group project all due in the same week (and how did teachers manage to inevitably schedule things that way, anyway?), it was still easier than scrambling to go to school all day and work in the evenings and still get homework and everything done when you knew that the mortgage payment was coming up, and after that the electric bill, and no, they didn't _need_ cable, but they needed internet at home if they were going to be able to do research, and Mom had just had her hours cut, or had been fired again, and she'd stopped taking her medication, and everything felt like it was a falling apart. A few hours a week of work study, she'd said, was nothing compared to that.

"Just... roll with it, Griffin," Octavia said. "You needed a place to stay. I decided you could stay here, and Bellamy agreed, and now you're here and it's fine. Don't stress over it."

Clarke sighed. "I should have at least gotten your mother something. A 'thanks for letting me invade your home' gift."

"You don't need to do that," Octavia said. "But if you insist, there's still time. We can go shopping tomorrow or whenever."

"Okay," Clarke said, still annoyed but resigned, because really, where else was she going to go? She had other friends, but no one else that she was close enough to to ask them to let her crash for a week or more around the holidays. It was here, home, or the frat house. Here was definitely the best option at the moment.

That night she didn't sleep much. The couch was lumpy, and she was pretty sure that there was a spring digging up through the cushion and poking her in the back. She tossed and turned, and just as she was drifting off Ms. Blake came out to get some food, and the noise woke her up again, although she kept her eyes shut so that if Ms. Blake looked over at her, she would think that she was still asleep. She didn't want to make her feel bad for waking her, or worse, have her think that her awakeness was an invitation for conversation. It worked, or maybe Ms. Blake didn't even look, but whatever the case, she returned to her room with her plate of food soon after, and Clarke went back to tossing and turning.

In the morning, she was the first one up, and carefully folded the sheets and blankets they'd used to turn the couch into a bed, and got the coffee started. Ms. Blake was up next, and she got ready for work in silence and headed out the door with a travel mug of coffee and no acknowledgment whatsoever that she hadn't had to make it. Not that Clarke had been looking for that; obviously she didn't owe her anything. But a thank you might have been nice.

Bellamy was up next, and he _did_ say thank you, and then asked her what she wanted in her omelet. 

"You cook?" she asked. 

"I had to," he said. "So what do you want?"

"Um." Clarke frowned. "What do you have?"

"Check the fridge," Bellamy said.

Clarke looked, having to poke around the containers of leftovers to see what was in there. "I think just cheese," she said finally. "Not a big fan of mushrooms, at least not in omelets, and cooked peppers..." She shuddered.

"Cheese it is," Bellamy said. "Grab the bacon while you're in there? Or as I like to call it, fake-on." He got to work cracking eggs and turning them into perfectly cooked omelets while the bacon (which was turkey bacon, because Octavia liked that better, claiming that the fatty parts of regular bacon skeeved her out) cooked in the oven. By the time he was done making Clarke's, Octavia was up, rubbing her eyes and yawning as she went to the kitchen and poured glasses of juice. 

"Look at us," she said. "All domestic." She looked at Clarke. "We should make a pact," she said. "If we haven't found decent husbands by the time that we're, like... thirty, we should just lesbian marry each other."

Clarke snorted. "I just remembered why I generally try not to talk to you in the morning," she said. "You make no sense."

"I'm serious," Octavia said, although obviously she wasn't really. "We would get all of the tax benefits, and we could just cook each other breakfast and stuff and do all of the stuff that married people do. Except, like, have sex, because I love you, Clarke, but not like that." 

"You may wish to note that I am not the one cooking," Clarke said. "That's your brother."

"Well I can't marry my brother, obviously," Octavia said. "I am 99% sure that that is illegal in all 50 states, although I could possibly be wrong about Arkansas or Alabama or one of those places. Especially since there is a possibility that, genetically, we're only half-siblings."

"Do I get a say in this?" Bellamy asked.

"I already said I'm not marrying you," Octavia said, "so no. Even though you would look adorable all down on one knee." She grinned at him and bounced up on her toes to kiss his cheek. "I love you, Bell."

"I don't even want to admit I know you, O," he responded, swatting at her with the spatula.

"Ooh, or you could marry Clarke, and I could be your spinster sister who lives with you," she said. "That's another option."

"That is still a little too incest-y for me to really get behind," Bellamy said. 

"Thank you," Clarke said, and meant it. She liked Octavia's brother well enough – as a friend, and as the brother she'd never had. But when she looked at him, she didn't get any kind of butterflies in her stomach. Honestly, when she'd first met him she'd been pretty much prepared to hate him, because he was in a fraternity and she already had her own ideas (which, granted, were based pretty much solely on TV and movies, although any time she'd ever seen a frat mentioned in the news, it wasn't in a good way) about what that meant he would be like, and to some extent he'd lived up to that, but after she'd known him for a few weeks he'd mellowed out a bit, and she'd gotten to see how he was with Octavia, and she'd changed her mind. But not enough for feelings to go anywhere near romantic.

"Thirty is a long time from now anyway," Octavia decided. "We have time to figure out the details."

"How do you live with her?" Clarke asked Bellamy. 

"How do you?" he countered. 

"Touché."

Soon they all had their breakfast, and they settled in to eat. After they were done, Clarke volunteered to do the dishes, and Octavia went to shower while Bellamy finished packing. By mid-morning, he was on his way. 

"I'll see you soon," he told him, giving Clarke a quick hug and Octavia a long one. 

"For New Year's?" Octavia asked. "You promised."

"I didn't promise," Bellamy said, "but yes, probably. But then you'll have to come back here until classes start, or at least until the dorms open."

Octavia pouted. "We'll see."

Bellamy rolled his eyes. "Have fun. Don't do anything I wouldn't do." He hugged Octavia again, and whispered something that Clarke couldn't quite hear, but she was pretty sure the word 'mom' was in there.

Octavia nodded, and they stood on the tiny porch and waved to him as he pulled out of the driveway before retreating inside. As soon as the door was closed, Octavia pushed Clarke back towards the couch, flopping down beside and half on top of her as soon as she sat down. 

"Okay," she said. "Spill."


	10. Lexa

They spent most of the day just relaxing, with Anya occasionally poking Lexa to keep her from dozing off. 'Tough love,' she called it, and Lexa understood and didn't argue with her. By nine o'clock, though, she'd gotten to the point where keeping her eyes open any longer seemed like an impossibility, and Anya agreed that it was late enough to qualify as a somewhat reasonable bedtime, and let her retreat to her room.

She should have known better. By eleven, she was awake again, and she got up to use the bathroom just as Anya as switching off the TV. She tried to avoid catching her eye, but Anya was having none of that. She just waited outside the bathroom for Lexa to come out. "Can't sleep?" she asked.

"I slept," Lexa replied. "Then I woke up."

"Are you going to be able to go back to sleep?"

Lexa shrugged. 

"Has it been like this the whole time?"

"You're not..." Lexa sighed. Anya was trying to help, and saying 'You're not my shrink' would probably lead them back into the argument that they'd already had a dozen or more times last summer, and several times via Skype when she was away. 'You're not my shrink,' Lexa would say. 'Leave it alone.'

'Maybe you should see one,' Anya would reply. 'They might be able to help you get through this.'

'You think I'm just going to spill my guts to a total stranger, and they'll just help me pick up the pieces and suddenly I'll be whole again?' Lexa would argue. 'It doesn't work that way.'

'I know it doesn't work that way,' Anya would tell her. 'I know it's not that simple. But it might help.'

'I'll think about it,' Lexa would say, and then she wouldn't think about it. Or she would, and dismiss it as a bad idea because there was nothing that could help. Nothing would ever make it hurt less. Nothing would ever make it better. 

Whoever said 'time heals all wounds' obviously didn't know anything, because the truth was, nothing healed old wounds. Not even time. It was a proven biological fact. You could get injured, cut yourself open, and it would heal, and scar... but then, say, you ended up with something like scurvy, and your body started breaking down – those old wounds would reopen. The scarring would undo itself, and there that old wound would be, as bad as ever, and maybe worse. 

Or at least she was pretty sure she'd read that somewhere. 

The point was, nothing anyone could say could fix this, could undo what she'd done, and she just had to live with that. 

'That's not living,' Anya would say, had said, and Lexa would shrug, had shrugged, and tell her, 'Well it's all I've got right now.'

"I'll get back to sleep eventually," Lexa said. "Just go to bed. Don't worry about me."

"You know saying that won't actually stop me, right?" Anya said. 

"What would?"

Anya looked at her, sighed. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe you showing some signs of life."

"I'm alive," Lexa said. "My heart is beating, my lungs are breathing. I went running this morning, remember? Dead people can't do that. They just... shamble. Hence why it's The _Walking_ Dead, not The Running Dead."

Anya shook her head. "Try to sleep, Lexa."

"I try," Lexa said. "You think I don't try?"

"I think..." Anya sighed again. "I don't know what I think, honestly. I just hate seeing you like this. Like going away for four, almost five months did nothing at all. Like you coming back here just put you right back at square one."

"It didn't," Lexa said. "I am solidly on square two, at least. Maybe square two and a half." It was meant to be a joke, and Anya was meant to laugh, but the delivery was so flat, and her complete inability to make her face form the shape of a smile made it come out defensive. "I'm fine, okay? I'm fine."

"You are so far from fine you can't even see it from where you are," Anya said. "But maybe this is one of those things where you just have to 'fake it 'til you make it'. Pretend you're fine until maybe you really are."

"Okay," Lexa said. "Can I go back to my room now?"

"Go ahead," Anya said. "If you need anything..." She gestured toward her door.

"I know," Lexa said. "You're right there."

If they were normal people who had grown up in normal families, they probably would have hugged then. Instead they just stood there awkwardly for a second, not hugging and knowing that that's what was supposed to happen, and maybe wanting it to happen, and then they just shut themselves back in their respective rooms.

Lexa turned on her laptop (Anya had given her the wifi password) and began to scroll through all of the pictures that she'd taken in Australia. She had taken hundreds, maybe thousands, in the months that she'd been there, and as she went from one to the next to the next (deleting the ones that were out of focus or otherwise not worth keeping) she noticed something that she hadn't realized when she was taking them: they were all landscapes and objects. There was not a single portrait in them. She'd taken pictures of places, and things, the occasional animal for variety, but never of people. There were a few where people appeared around the edges because that had been inevitable, especially on the beaches, but they were never the focus of the picture.  
She'd used to take pictures of people, hadn't she? She'd used to focus on them, to try and capture their expressions, their emotions as they showed on their faces and in their posture. Now her pictures were empty. Beautiful, but devoid of any kind of human feeling or warmth.

Just like her. (Although with the circles under her eyes the beautiful part was debatable, too, and who cared about that anyway?)

She waited until her eyes started to feel heavy again, and then turned off the computer and turned on an audiobook (she wasn't even sure what she was listening to... she didn't care and it didn't matter) and finally fell back to sleep.

She was up again before the sun, but this time before she went out for a run she put her ear to Anya's door, listening for any signs of life. She thought she heard her moving around, so she knocked lightly.

"Come in," Anya said, and smiled when she saw Lexa. "I can be ready in less than ten minutes, if you want to wait. Otherwise, I'll catch up."

"I can wait," Lexa said.

"Okay. Ten minutes tops. Probably not even."

Lexa shut the door and went to the kitchen, pouring herself some juice, figuring it would boost her blood sugar enough to get her through a run, and they could eat after. She was pretty sure that she was hungry, or that she would be.

Anya hadn't lied; she was out of her room in less than 10 minutes, and a minute or two later they were out in the cold, running as the sun came up, and the silence was okay between them, and there was frost on the trees that made them sparkle as the sun's rays hit them, before they got strong enough to melt it off. 

"You've been keeping up with your workouts," Anya said. "While you were away." It wasn't a question.

"Yes," Lexa said. "It was something to do. It helped me learn the city." And it allowed her to be antisocial without seeming antisocial. Running was usually a solitary activity, because it was hard to find someone who could match your pace well enough that someone wasn't always pushing, or holding back. Most of the people she'd been forced to interact with had thought she was crazy for wanting to just go out and run. It wasn't even that they weren't fit; running just wasn't their thing. So they'd left her to it.

"Did you find a dojang?" Anya asked. 

"No."

"Did you look?"

"No."

Anya nodded. "Fair enough. Are you going to train now that you're back?"

"I don't know," Lexa said. "It's..." It forced her to interact with people, at least to an extent, and she wasn't really good at that anymore. On the other hand, it wasn't like it was social time when they were out on the mats, and it might feel good to... not fight, not exactly, but have a place to get out her frustration in a productive way. "I'm thinking about it." Which was different from 'I'll think about it,' because the latter was just a way to shut down a conversation, whereas the former was an actual maybe. 

"It would be good to have you back," Anya said. 

"It would be good to be back," Lexa said, and in saying it knew that it was true. It was a part of her life that _she_ had never been part of. The people at the dojang might have known about _her_ , if Lexa ever mentioned her in passing, but to them she had been just Lexa, not one half of a pair that was really just a single unit, and if they knew what had happened, their pity wouldn't change how they treated her on the mats. At least she hoped it wouldn't. 

"There's no class this week – I guess they decided to actually take a vacation for once – but after New Year's, we could go back, see how it feels?"

"Yes," Lexa agreed. She could always back out later, but maybe Anya was at least a little bit right about the faking it thing. Maybe, if she pretended she was okay, she would at least become adept at appearing as if she was. She'd done it last semester, but then no one had really known anything about her there, and she'd managed to put them off enough that they didn't try to pry into her too hard. So why couldn't she do the same here? 

"And we should go deal with your phone," Anya said. "So that people can call you without having to dial Australia." 

"We?" Lexa asked. "I don't need you to... babysit me. I can deal with it myself."

"You can," Anya said. "But it seems like it would be stupid for both of us to be paying full price for a phone plan when we can do one of those friends and family deals and each pay half the bill."

"You make a good point," Lexa said. 

"I know," Anya said, grinning. "I usually do. You just don't like to listen."

"Youthful rebellion," Lexa replied. "Anything that comes out of the mouth of an old person must automatically be dismissed and ignored."

"Who are you calling old?" Anya asked. 

"You," Lexa replied. "You're a _grad_ student. Obviously you're old."

"Oh, you'd better run, little girl," Anya said, "before I come after you with my cane."

Lexa laughed, and the sound startled both of them, and then she did run, and Anya chased her, and by the time they got home they were both winded, panting and still laughing, and when Anya put her arm around Lexa and pulled her close it wasn't even awkward. 

"I'm going to go shower my creaky old bones," Anya said. "You can make breakfast this time."

"Anything you say, Grandma," Lexa teased, and dodged the swipe that Anya made at her head as she passed. 

As she opened the fridge to see what she had to work with, she realized that she was, against all odds, smiling. But the realization made the guilt come crashing back, and the moment had passed long before Anya emerged to see it.


	11. Clarke

"I already told you," Clarke said. "Seriously, O, I don't know what you're looking for."

"I'm looking for the truth," Octavia said. "Not half of the truth, or three-quarters of the truth. All of it. And I know you're not giving it to me. I can tell. It's all over your face. You're a terrible liar."

Clarke sighed. She kind of was, although she'd gotten better at it over the years. When she was younger, she hadn't been able to keep anything from anyone. Then her father had died, and she'd learned to shut up, and if most of her lies were by omission, well, what business was it of anyone else's, what she did and didn't share? 

"Would it make you more comfortable if we got back into our pajamas and popped some popcorn?" Octavia asked. 

"What the hell would that do?" Clarke asked, looking at her friend like she'd just lost her mind, because clearly she had. 

"Well that's what girls do at slumber parties, right? They sit up all night and paint their nails and do their hair and tell each other their secrets? That's what the movies have told me. Unless they're lying? But the media _never_ lies." 

"I wouldn't know," Clarke said. "I didn't have a lot of friends."

Octavia raised an eyebrow. 

"I mean it. I didn't have a lot of friends. I preferred to have just a few close friends than a lot of acquaintances. And my best friend was a boy, so that kind of limited the whole sleepover thing to when one of our sets of parents wanted to go out for the night and they didn't want to pay for a babysitter." She shrugged. 

"Fine. So no pajamas?"

"If you want to get back into your pajamas, be my guest," Clarke said. "It's not going to change the fact that I've already told you what's going on, and you don't want to believe me."

"It's not that I don't _want_ to believe you," Octavia said. "It's that I _don't_ believe you, because you're lying, or at the very least not telling the whole truth. Also, your fingernails are a mess and they need to be done, and that seemed like a subtle way to get in there without you knowing that the bitten-to-the-quick look kinda grosses me out."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "They're not that bad."

"They're that bad," Octavia said. "I know you don't care about those kinds of things, but come on. Live a little. Let me give you the full spa treatment... or at least let me file them and paint them. It'll be fun."

"You and I have very different definitions of fun," Clarke said, but she didn't object when Octavia went and got a little shoebox filled with nail polish and the other tools necessary to give Clarke a manicure. She just let Octavia work in silence, figuring eventually she wouldn't be able to take it anymore and she would demand answers again. She still didn't know what she was going to tell her. It wasn't like the truth was... well, Octavia probably wouldn't think it was that bad, anyway, but she wasn't the one who was going to have to live with it. 

"Blue?" Clarke asked, when Octavia pulled a bottle from the box. "Because cyanotic is the new black."

Now Octavia rolled her eyes. "It suits your mood, Eeyore," she said. "If I had gray, I might use that."

"I'm fine, O, seriously," Clarke said. 

"No, you're not," Octavia countered. "You're not fine, because if you were fine, you wouldn't be sitting there with your eyebrows almost meeting in the middle of your forehead and scowling. You don't even realize you're doing it, do you?"

She hadn't. "I've just got a lot on my mind," Clarke said. "It's nothing to worry about, O. I promise."

"I don't care if I should _worry_ about it or not," Octavia said. "I just want to know what's going on with you. How can I help if I don't know what's going on?"

"You can't help," Clarke said. "There's nothing that anyone can do, except me, and the only thing that I can do is get over it. So fine. I'm over it. Done." She started to lift her hands to brush her palms against each other like she was brushing away flour or dirt at the end of a task, but Octavia kept hold of the right one. 

"It," Octavia said. "What is this _it_ that you must get over?"

"Nothing," Clarke said. "Just my mom and her boyfriend, or whatever he is. Can you be that old and still have a _boy_ friend?" 

"I don't know. Man-friend just sounds ridiculous," Octavia said. "Yet people will say lady-friend. What is the about? But I guess it's not man and lady, it's man and woman, and people don't say woman-friend. At least I hope they don't." The expression on her face was enough to make Clarke swallow a laugh. "So it would be lady and gentleman, and I guess you could say gentleman-friend, but it sounds sort of ridiculous."

"And like a euphemism," Clarke said. "I'm pretty sure lady-friend and gentleman-friend are adult for fuckbuddy."

Octavia snorted. "Do you think that's what it is? You said that you think he's living there."

"Yeah," Clarke said. "Maybe not officially? But... I was there, and I'd been there a few days, since finals ended, but I guess he'd been away? So I didn't actually see him until Christmas morning, when he comes in like he... well, like he lives there. Bags of groceries and presents and everything, and... he's got a key, O. I know the door was locked because I went to bed after my mom, and I locked it. So he has a key, and he just let himself in. Like he belonged there."

"And she never mentioned that to you?" Octavia asked, moving to the other hand. 

"No," Clarke said. "She's never even really said that she's dating him, officially. She's mentioned going out with him, but I feel like she's specifically not used the word date, you know?"

"And having him come over on Christmas... I guess that could just be a friendly thing," Octavia said. "But when your kid is home for the first time since she started college, and she's never met the guy? That seems pretty... serious, I guess. It's definitely making a statement."

"I've met him," Clarke said. "Before. He's worked with my mom for a long time." And that was part of it, too. If they were this close... and it was obvious that they were _close_... how long had they been this close? It was possible – wasn't it? – that maybe this hadn't just happened recently? Maybe she'd turned to him in grief, and it had started then, but that kind of made him seem like an asshole, taking advantage of someone who wasn't exactly in their right mind, and whatever else Clarke thought about him, she didn't think that that's the kind of guy that he was. At least not where her mom was concerned.

Which was the other thing. Or one of the other things. She wanted to hate him. She _really_ wanted to hate him, but the fact was, he was a decent guy, and he made her mom happy. Which meant it made _her_ an asshole to not be cool with it, right? But there was still the first point to contend with, and the fact that her mother had kept it a secret... although she probably would have argued that she hadn't. 'I didn't discuss it with you, Clarke, because it's not really your business. It's _my_ personal life, and it's just that – personal. I don't ask for details about your personal life, do I?' 

'No, Mom, you don't. But I doubt very much that it has anything to do with you wanting to respect my privacy and everything to do with the fact that you just don't care.' But she wouldn't say that, and it wasn't true, anyway. It was just one of those things that you said when you wanted to hurt someone. 

She knew that her mom cared. She knew that her mom loved her. But it felt – and it had _always_ felt – like there were limits on that. Like she had to be a specific version of herself for her mother to love her, and if she deviated too far from that, that would be it. And she wasn't sure that she could be who her mother wanted her to be. At least not all the time. She wasn't sure that she wanted to be, when it maybe meant compromising herself, and what she wanted, and what she dreamed of, to shove herself into a mold that was Abby Griffin-shaped, not Clarke.

"Okay, so, you've met him. But it doesn't seem like you've really interacted with him a lot?"

"Not a lot, no," Clarke said. "So he just shows up, and he goes over to my mom and he kisses her. On the cheek, but... I mean, come on. It's obvious in the way he looks at her, and the way she looks at him, that they kind of want to make out a little."

"Gross," Octavia said with a laugh.

"Exactly." Clarke forced a smile. "And it's fine for a while, you know? Like, we're all being adults, we're all being polite, he's asking me about school and everything. So far, so good. But he's just... too familiar with the house? Like he emptied the dishwasher and knew where everything went. Not just the forks and plates and glasses, but the weird, random stuff that half the time _you_ forget where they go, and you've lived there your entire life. Like that."

Octavia frowned, biting her lip. "I... still don't think I understand why you freaked out and left," she said, keeping Clarke's hand in her own. "I get that it was super awkward and uncomfortable, and that it's this guy who isn't your dad occupying the space where your dad was, and... Maybe I just don't get it, because I _can't_ get it, because my dad was never around and none of my mom's boyfriends ever really bothered to get to know us at all, and none of them stuck around to get to the point of the moving in stage. So maybe there's just no way for me to really understand what that feels like. But you're talking about it, and you seem basically calm about it. Like it was getting under your skin a little, but... you ran away. To someone who is barely more than an acquaintance. On Christmas. It just feels like there must be more to the story."

Silence, because Clarke was fighting the urge to scream or cry, and if she didn't keep her mouth and eyes shut tight, one or the other was going to happen, and she really didn't want to do either. So she just breathed, in and out, until she was calm. Or calm-ish. As close to calm as she felt like she could ever be, given the circumstances.

"She's pregnant," she said finally. "At one point he came up behind her and put his arms around her, put his hands on her belly – like people do – and he just had this _look_ on his face, and she kind of moved away, and he looked surprised, and she looked at him and she said, 'I haven't told her yet.' But of course at that point, she didn't need to. So I just... left. Because I could be deal with awkward. I could deal with 'guess who's coming to dinner and who also basically lives here?' But that? That..." Clarke shook her head. "Maybe I'm a shitty person, but that was the last straw. So I left."

Octavia just stared at her, and then she pulled her into a hug, and held on. And when the tears came, she didn't let go, and she didn't let go, until the flood dried to a trickle, and then to sniffles. "Thanks," Clarke whispered, her face still pressed into her friend's shoulder. "I... guess I needed that," she said. 

"I guess you did," Octavia agreed, handing her a tissue. "What are friends for?"


	12. Lexa

They fell into a routine. Get up, run, come back, shower, have breakfast. After breakfast they usually hung out in the living room, often with the TV on for background noise, but sometimes not. Anya was trying to get ahead on her reading for her next semester classes, and had a lot of emails to respond to from the professors of the two classes she was TA-ing. ("Yes, two," she'd said. "Yes, I'm insane." Lexa hadn't disagreed.) Lexa honestly didn't know what it involved, but it seemed to leave Anya swearing more often than not, and she could only imagine that it would get worse as they got into the semester and Anya actually had to start dealing with students.

Lunch usually wasn't very formal – leftovers from the night before, or sandwiches, sometimes soup although Anya was starting to turn up her nose at the stuff from the can. One day they decided to make some, with Lexa mostly being used for cutting up vegetables into small pieces while Anya worried about the seasoning and such. That lasted a couple of days. 

After lunch, sometimes they went out, or sometimes they didn't. Anya tried to encourage Lexa to join the real world, and Lexa mostly went along with it, because she didn't really feel like fighting with her. This was her life now, and she would have to learn to live it. Being a pain in the ass to the person she lived with, who was coincidentally also possibly her only friend, probably wasn't a good idea.

"You need more warm clothes," Anya announced one afternoon, because Lexa was sitting bundled up in the fleece that had become hers by default because she always pulled it from the closet when they went out, and her own hadn't made the trip from her father's house to here, apparently. "Spring is a long way off."

"I thought I had more," Lexa said. "I got through last winter somehow."

Anya frowned. "You did," she said, her tone even. "You just... got rid of them."

Lexa bit the inside of her lip, looking down and away, because looking at Anya was too hard. She remembered. She'd tried to forget, but she remembered. She'd been in her room, surrounded by all of her stuff from school which was still only half unpacked, and she'd just... lost it. She'd started tearing through things, sorting them into piles – keep, donate, and throw away – and the center pile had been the biggest, because she didn't like to waste things but what did you do when you couldn't stand to look at anything you owned anymore because it was all imbued with memories? How could she put on a shirt that _she_ had worn far more often than Lexa had, to the point that sometimes Lexa forgot that it was hers to begin with, but it had somehow ended up in her drawer at the end of the year and therefore came home with her? How could she keep the jewelry box that _she_ had touched, sifting through its contents, holding up this or that and asking for its story (there usually wasn't one, no matter how much _she_ had wanted there to be, and sometimes Lexa had made things up just to have something to say beyond which base they'd been living on in which country when she'd bought it, until _she_ had started to catch on and asked again about the same piece and Lexa didn't realize and told a whole different story, but _she_ hadn't minded the little white lie, _she_ had only laughed)? 

So she'd shoved it all into boxes and bags and driven it all to Goodwill and dumped it there, in the middle of the night when no one else was awake to stop her, and in the end she'd had almost nothing left, so that when it came time to pack for Australia she'd had to go shopping, only she hated shopping so Anya had mostly done it for her, and they were close enough in size that even when things had to be tried on, they'd ended up fitting okay. 

"I'm sorry," Lexa said, because she didn't know what else to say. She wasn't even sure what she was sorry about, but she knew that she'd put Anya through hell last summer (never quite able to figure out why she'd stuck around; surely she'd had better things to do) and maybe she was doing it again, but she was trying not to.

"I'll drive," Anya said, getting up to get her keys. "The holiday crowds should have subsided by now."

"Okay," Lexa said, because what else was she going to say? 

They got in the car and went to the mall, and Lexa didn't even really look at the price tags because she needed clothes, and she needed to find things fast before she lost her nerve, or her resolve, or whatever it was that insulated her against the noise and unnatural lighting and the sense that the entire weight of the world was pressing in around her, and at any moment someone was going to come up and try to say hi and she would lose it on them. The money didn't matter; she was using her dad's credit card, and she figured if he asked she would say that it was his Christmas gift to her, and he wouldn't argue with that. They hadn't talked since she'd gotten back, or for weeks before her return, but she figured they would eventually. It wasn't that they didn't love each other (although there was the whole question of what love was, really, anyway); they just didn't ever really have anything to say.

"I want a smoothie," Anya said, as they were getting ready to leave. "It won't take long."

Lexa said nothing, which Anya took to be acquiescence, and they got in line. Anya was just receiving her cup when someone called her name. Lexa looked, cringing inwardly at the inevitable delay, because the odds were not in their favor that whoever it was was shouting for some _other_ Anya.

"Lincoln," Anya said, smiling at the man approaching. He was Anya's age, or maybe a little older, tan, his hair shaved into a Mohawk. His grin gave him the look of an oversized puppy dog, somehow, which was ironic considering the fact that he was probably about as wide as Anya and Lexa side-by-side, and had the kind of look (when he wasn't smiling) that would make people give him a wide berth. "Hey."

The name jogged Lexa's memory. Lincoln. He trained at the dojang... which kind of explained why she didn't recognize him right away. One, she hadn't seen him in months, and two, people often looked completely different out of uniform. 

They didn't so much shake hands as clasp forearms, which was maybe a little weird but Lexa figured it was sort of the intermediate step between a handshake and a hug, and whatever, it wasn't any of her business anyway. 

"Who is—" Lincoln stopped, looked at her, and his smile grew almost impossibly wider. "Lexa! Long time no see!"

She didn't get the option of the 'is this real life or is this an epic fantasy?' armclasp. She got tugged into a giant hug, which happened too quickly for her to dodge, and was released too quickly for her to feel the need to escape. "Yeah," she said. "Well."

"Australia, huh? Pretty awesome, mate." He laughed as she rolled her eyes. "Did you learn to surf?"

She shrugged. "A little." Because he didn't know, didn't need to know, that she already knew how. He father had been stationed in Hawaii, once upon a time, and she'd learned there. 

"Cool. Are you coming back to train? The school's closed until after New Year's, but you know everyone would love to have you back."

"I think so," Lexa said. "I don't know."

"Good," Lincoln said. "It will be great getting to train with you again. You know how it is. College town and all, people start and then they get to, like, yellow belt, maybe green, and then school gets busy or they find something else to do or money gets tight, and they just disappear. It's always nice to have people who really want to be there and stick with it."

Lexa nodded. Tae Kwon Do had been one of the only constants in her life; no matter where they'd gone, her father had found a dojang for her to train in. Moving around all the time had meant that sometimes she was behind the other students with her same rank in one school, and ahead in others, and it had taken her a lot longer to get her black belt than it likely would have if she'd been able to stay in one school the entire time, but she'd done it eventually, and even after she hadn't given it up. She liked the school here, and it would be good to go back. (If she thought it enough, she might even completely believe it by the time she walked through the door.)

"Hey, do you two have plans for New Year's Eve?" Lincoln asked. "I was thinking of getting a group together, going downtown for that First Night thing? It might be lame, but it might be cool, and I figure if there's a bunch of us, it's less likely to suck." That smile again, and Lexa wondered how many girls followed him around all the time, hoping for a shot at it being flashed in their direction.

"We don't have any plans yet," Anya said. "We'll think about it. But we've got to get going. I'll call you."

"Do you have my number?" Lincoln asked. 

"Yes," Anya said. 

"Cool. See you later."

Lexa didn't say anything until they were back in the car. Her bags had been piled in the back seat, and Anya was sitting behind the wheel, sipping her smoothie before putting it in the cup holder and turning the car on. "Go ahead and say it," she said, when the silence stretched. "I know you're going to, so just say it."

"Say what?" Lexa asked, more because it annoyed her that Anya thought she knew her so well that she could predict what she was going to say than because she actually thought Anya was _wrong_.

"Say that you're not going. That I can go if I want to, but you're not going. Too many people, too much noise, you're not up for it. _Und so weiter._ " Because they'd both spent time in Germany growing up, and somehow sometimes it seemed to fit better than 'etcetera'.

"Why would I say it?" Lexa said. "It goes without saying."

"You're going to have to rejoin the real world at some point, Lexa," Anya said. "You could make your new year's resolution to actually try to live a little, even if it's only to remind yourself that you're still alive."

Lexa shrugged. "Maybe," she said. _But I'm still not going._


	13. Clarke

"Octavia, come _on_ ," Clarke urged. "We're going to be late."

"We can't be late," Octavia said. "It goes until midnight, and it's not like we have to get there by any particular time."

"Except that we're meeting people," Clarke said. "Like your brother?"

Octavia shrugged. "He's used to it."

Clarke sighed, fidgeting with the scarf that she'd wrapped around her neck. She was starting to overheat, sitting around waiting for Octavia to be finished getting ready. She'd thought that putting her coat and everything on might have urged her along, but she'd thought wrong. "Are you sure you're going to be warm enough?"

Octavia caught her eyes through the mirror and grinned. "The whole point is that I'll look so cute someone equally cute – or nearly equally cute, as I'm the cutest – will want to keep me warm. Also, there's this." She picked up and flask and jiggled it so that Clarke could hear it slosh.

She could have explained to Octavia that drinking alcohol would actually be worse for her, in the long run, for keeping warm, but she knew that the words would go in one ear and straight out the other. Not that Octavia wouldn't get it – she would – she just wouldn't care. 

"Thanks again, by the way," Octavia said, plucking at the hem of the dress that she wore, which had been Clarke's Christmas gift to her.

"You're welcome," Clarke said. She knew what Octavia wasn't saying, and she didn't bring it up. It was one of those things that they didn't really talk about, because there was really no way for it to not be awkward. She had been with Octavia on regular pilgrimages to visit the dress that she coveted, and could never afford, so when it became the season of gift-giving, she'd bought it for her. Octavia had nearly been in tears when she'd gone back and found that it was no longer there (or at least not in her size) and she _had_ been in tears (of joy) when it had reappeared nestled in a brightly wrapped box on her bed the last day before winter break. 

Because money was something that Clarke had, and although she was generally careful with it, splurging to get her new best friend something that she knew that she would love had seemed like a pretty worthy cause. Every woman needed a little black dress, right? This one was nice enough to look good for parties, but also simple and modest enough to be good for things like interviews, and so really, it was practical as well as extravagant. 

Octavia had been apologetic as she'd given Clarke her gift, which was just a few mix CDs that she'd put together for different moods. 'It's not much,' she'd said. 'But...'

Clarke loved them, though. She'd listened to one of them on her drive home, and had found it to be perfect company, and there wasn't a single song on it that she didn't like. Even the ones that she didn't know, she'd instantly enjoyed. So as far as she was concerned, she'd come out ahead in the exchange – she had something that had come from the heart, specifically created for her, and that made her smile every time she turned on her car, _and_ she'd gotten nearly tackled with a hug because she'd gotten Octavia exactly what she wanted. Win-win.

"Okay, I'm ready," Octavia announced finally. "Let's go." And then all of a sudden she was in a hurry, as if Clarke hadn't been waiting on her all along. 

"At least take a coat," Clarke said. "It might take a little while to find your knight in down parka armor."

Octavia laughed. "Yes mom." But she put on a coat, and they got in the car and sang along all the way back to campus.

"Took you guys long enough," Bellamy said. "We've been waiting here for half an hour."

"You have not," Octavia said. "You've been waiting for... twenty-two minutes, based on when you texted me to ask where we were, because you'd been waiting for ten minutes."

"I rounded up," Bellamy said. 

"Two is less than five, so you round down," Octavia said. "Anyway, we're here now, so quit complaining and let's go have some fun." She headed off in a direction that she seemed to have picked at random, and they all followed.

Finn sidled up beside Clarke and nudged her gently with his elbow. "Hey," he said.

"Hey." She wasn't sure what she was supposed to do. She hadn't talked to him since she'd left the day after Christmas, and she'd known he was going to be here but she'd tried not to think too much about it. She didn't want things to be awkward, but she figured that was largely up to him. As far as she was concerned, the whole thing was over. One night stand, and now they could be friends.

"It's nice to see you again," he said. 

"You too," she said.

And maybe awkward was impossible to avoid, because look at how he looked at her. If she was being honest, she kind of liked it. People wanted to be wanted, didn't they? That was human nature. They wanted to be wanted, needed to be needed... and wasn't that a song? Shit. She'd had a few sips from Octavia's flask, and already her head was spinning out. She wasn't usually a lightweight. 

"Anything in particular you wanted to see?" Finn asked. "There's lots of little shows happening, and music, and food. Lots of food. Are you hungry?"

"I could eat," Clarke said. 

"Let's go find something, then," Finn said. They told everyone else what they were doing, and since no one wanted to join them (or they'd made some kind of pact with Finn before meeting up that if she'd agreed to go somewhere with him, they wouldn't tag along, maybe, but she hoped it wasn't anything so calculated) they headed off on their own. 

At first the silence between them was awkward, but as they wandered they found things to talk about... even if it was mostly just the things that they were seeing. Clarke wasn't actually sure they had much in common... other than the fact that they'd slept together, and it had seemed like a good idea at the time. But he was cute, and when he bought himself a drink (he'd just turned 21, it turned out) he shared, and the warmth of it spread through her so that when he took her hand a little later it didn't seem weird. 

Things were actually going mostly okay – maybe even building to something more than okay – until her phone started buzzing in her pocket. "Hold on," she said. "I should check this."

"Sure," he said, and relinquished her hand. 

A text from Octavia. No, several texts, sent pretty much one right after the other. 

**Octavia:** Where are you?

**Octavia:** Are you still with Finn?

**Octavia:** Do you know where Bell is?

**Octavia:** I think someone is following me. 

**Octavia:** And not in a good way.

Was there a good way to have someone following you? 

"We need to find Octavia," Clarke said. "Now."

**Clarke:** Where are you, O? We're coming to find you.

**Octavia:** Maple and Main? 

**Octavia:** But I can't stay in one place. I don't want whoever is following me to catch me.

"What's happening?" Finn asked. 

"Someone is following Octavia. She must have gotten separated from the group. She's pretty freaked out."

"Maybe it's a friend," Finn said. "I mean, maybe they're just trying to catch up with her."

"Don't you think if it was a friend they would have called out to her?" Clarke asked, her voice sharper than maybe she'd intended, but it was kind of a stupid thing to say, she thought. "Or texted her? Or called her?"

"Maybe," Finn said. "Where is she?"

"This way," Clarke said. 

They found Octavia a few minutes later, and Clarke pulled her into a tight hug. "You okay?" she whispered. 

"I think so," Octavia said. "Maybe it was nothing. I just... had a bad feeling."

"Go with your gut," Clarke said. "Why don't we go find your brother and everyone?"

Octavia wrinkled her nose. "I am so not kissing my brother at midnight," she said, but she smiled. Now when they walked, it was Octavia holding her hand rather than Finn, but Clarke was okay with that. _He_ wasn't the one who had developed a (hopefully) temporary creepy stalker.

They found Bellamy, and this time the group stuck together. Around 11:30, though, Octavia tugged at Clarke's arm. "I gotta pee," she said. "Come with me?"

"Of course," Clarke said, and followed Octavia to the nearest restroom that had been opened to the public, because of course she refused to go into a Port-a-Potty (and could Clarke really blame her on that?) It was packed, and she didn't need to go, so she told Octavia she would wait outside. 

Ten minutes ticked by, then twenty, and it was almost time for the fireworks. Where was Octavia?

**Clarke:** Everything okay?

A minute passed. Another. No reply, and there was no way she could get into the bathroom without pissing off a whole lot of women with full bladders to see if Octavia was still in there. The line had been long, but not _this_ long.

And then she heard a muffled yelp, something that might almost have been her name, and she ran toward the sound which was coming from nearby, but it was hard to triangulate, especially when no further noise was forthcoming. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit," she muttered. She knew that she should call Bellamy, but there was no time for that. 

So she just started looking down every street, every alley, looking for one that wasn't packed with people, one where someone might take a girl against her will. 

A hand closed around her sleeve, and she tried to yank away but the grip was tight. "We have your friend."

Clarke looked over, and slightly up, into the face of a young woman, couldn't be more than a few years older than her. "Where? Let her go."

"We're not keeping her _captive_ ," the woman replied, slightly exasperated. "Come on."

So Clarke came, even though her stomach was tying itself in knots and she was regretting the food that she'd eaten and the alcohol she'd drank. She found Octavia sitting on a bench between a man with a Mohawk, who had his arm around her, protective but not restraining her. On her other side was another girl, who was inspecting her knuckles. 

"Thank god," Octavia said, launching herself up off the bench and into Clarke's arms. "I'm sorry!"

Clarke didn't ask sorry for what. "So am I," she said. "But it's okay now, right? You're okay."

"I'm okay," Octavia agreed. "Thanks to..." She looked at the man.

"Lincoln," he said.


	14. Lexa

She couldn't believe she'd let herself be talked into this. Anya had let the subject of going out on New Year's Eve rest, and she'd thought that the conversation was over. But then, after dinner on the day itself, she shoved open Lexa's door (which hadn't been completely closed to begin with, or it would have been a lot ruder) and told her to get ready.

"Get ready for what?" she asked, even though she knew that it pissed Anya off when she played dumb. 

"We're going out," Anya said. "I am sick of being cooped up in this place, and so are you. You just don't realize it because you think that misery is supposed to be your natural state now. But you're going stir crazy, so come on."

It annoyed Lexa to no end how easily and well Anya was able to read her. She _was_ sick of being inside, but she was also crap at handling dealing with people outside, so it made for a pretty deep internal conflict. "If it's horrible am I allowed to come home?" she asked.

"If it's horrible, you can come home," Anya agreed. "If it gets to be too much, just tell me."

So she'd agreed to come along. Anya had talked to Lincoln, and he said that unfortunately most of the people that he'd invited already had plans or were too far away to come, but they could have a good time, just the three of them, right?

"He knows...?" Lexa started, but even she wasn't exactly sure where she was going with it. Part of her wanted to know whether he knew _why_ she'd disappeared for a semester, but part of her wondered, after the hug he'd given her, if there wasn't some other ulterior motive on his part? But even if he didn't know the whole story, he knew that she wasn't into guys, right? Or anyone, at this point, but definitely not guys. 

"He knows exactly as much as he needs to know," Anya said, "which is that you spent a semester abroad. He doesn't know why. It's just a thing that people do that you did." 

"Okay." Which didn't clear up the second question, but that she could deal with on her own if she had to. Probably. He wasn't the kind of guy who would push things if she said no, anyway. Especially since he knew exactly what kind of damage she was trained to inflict on anyone who decided to invade her personal space. 

"It'll be okay," Anya reassured her. "Go get dressed."

"I am dressed," Lexa pointed out. "Is there some reason for me to change?"

Anya looked her up and down. "No, I guess not." 

They'd left not long after and met up with Lincoln. They'd wandered through the streets, and Lexa discovered that being with Lincoln definitely had its advantages. People tended to get out of his way, so she wasn't constantly being jostled by the people that filled the streets. 

"Coffee, anyone?" Lincoln asked. 

"I'll have some," Anya said. "Lexa will have hot chocolate. Right?"

"Right," Lexa said, with that faint smile that she'd been working on mastering over the last few weeks. "Thanks."

"See?" Anya said, while Lincoln ducked into the shop to get their drinks. "It's not so bad."

"No," Lexa agreed. "Not so bad." Which wasn't to say that she wasn't fighting the urge to look for _her_ in the crowd, to search for her out of habit to make sure that she didn't get lost. It wasn't to say that she didn't see something and immediately turn to point it out to the person who was no longer at her side. It felt like an impossible dream that she might ever stop doing that, and fighting it was like tilting at windmills. So she just accepted it, accepted the pang in her heart and the knot in her gut every time it happened... and when her cup was handed to her, tried to melt it all away with chocolate.

The night wore on, and there were a few times when Lexa was almost ready to tell Anya that she was ready to go home, that she'd had enough, but she didn't want to ruin Anya's evening when it wasn't absolutely critical that she do so, so she soldiered on. It was what she was supposed to do, anyway. Taking one for the team and all that. She just kept taking slow, deep breaths of the chill air, trying not to think about how many lungs it had already passed through on its way to her, and none of them _hers_.

"What...?" Lincoln started, his head coming up and looking around. "Did you see that?"

"See what?" Anya asked. 

"A guy... I thought I saw a guy going after a girl. Chasing her, almost."

"Where?" They were both looking in the direction that Lincoln was, searching for some sign of what he had seen. 

"There," he said. "Come on." 

And then they were pushing their way through the crowd, throwing elbows and 'sorry's as they passed. Lexa shoved at one particularly large man that was blocking her path, and she thought for a second he was going to grab her, but maybe he saw something in her eyes when she looked at him that told him not to touch her, because he just let her past with a 'fucking bitch!' chasing her.

She saw the girl that was being followed go down, and as soon as that happened, the guy that had been following with her caught her and picked her up, hauling her bodily down a side street – more of an alley, really – that wasn't filled with people because there was nothing to see but the back doors of businesses. 

Lincoln started to run, Anya and Lexa a few steps behind him because their legs were shorter and he'd been ahead to begin with. He managed to yank the guy away from the girl, but then his attention seemed to go to her, rather than to making sure that the man didn't get away. That, Lexa guessed, was their job.

Anya blocked him when he tried to run, and Lexa...

Lexa lost it.

It was as though a red film dropped over the world, and she just lost it. She grabbed him and shoved him up against the wall, forearm against his throat as she drove a fist into his gut, and then lower, and he crumpled and hit the ground and she went down with him, knuckles seeking any part of him that they could find, until Anya grabbed her and pulled her up. "Stop!" she shouted, directly into Lexa's face, shaking her by the scruff of her neck like she was an animal... and maybe in that moment she was. "He's not worth an assault charge!"

They left him there, because the girl said that she didn't want to call the cops, that it was too much of a pain in the ass and they wouldn't do anything anyway, and she just wanted to find her friends. So Lincoln picked her up and carried her (because the reason she'd gone down in the first place was a twisted ankle) to a bench in an area that was well-lit and populated, and Lexa stayed there with him – them – while Anya went to find her friends, leaving Lincoln with strict orders to make sure that Lexa didn't go back to that alley and finish what she'd started. 

Anya came back a few minutes later with a blonde girl in tow, and the girl – Octavia, she'd said – threw herself into her arms with a, "Thank god," (whatever he had to do with anything) and an "I'm sorry," (for what, Lexa couldn't imagine). 

The response was muffled. All Lexa heard was, "You're okay."

"I'm okay," Octavia said, "thanks to..." And she must have realized then that she'd never gotten their names, because she looked at Lincoln to fill in the blank. Lexa kept her eyes on her knuckles, which hadn't cracked but were starting to bruise, and her punching form had been bad because it was all the wrong ones that were scraped raw.

"Lincoln," he said, and flashed her one of those smiles that he made him look like a big kid instead of some kind of bodyguard, although Lexa was pretty sure that he would say that he could be both at once. 

"Lincoln," the girl (Octavia) repeated. "Thanks to Lincoln."

Clarke looked over at Anya. "Thank you," she said. "For finding me." 

"Of course," Anya said. 

"I'm Clarke, by the way," the blonde girl said. 

"I'm Anya."

"Do you have a car?" Lincoln asked. "I don't think she should be walking on her ankle right now. I can give you a ride home if you don't."

"I have a car," Clarke said. "But thank you. We should really find the rest of our friends."

"Oh god," Octavia moaned. "Bell is going to kill me."

"Why?" Clarke asked. "It's not your fault."

"Because he told me I was going to break an ankle wearing heels in a crowd like this." Octavia said. "And look!" 

Lexa snorted, then covered the sound with a cough. No one seemed to be noticing her right now, and she preferred to keep it that way. Lincoln was the rescuer of damsels in distress, and Anya was the retriever of lost friends. She was no one, as far as they were concerned, and she was okay with that.

"Better he gets on your case for that than anything else," Clarke pointed out. "Not that he would... but if anything had happened..."

"He would be a basket case," Octavia filled in. "I know. I'll text him, have him come here. We should be able to see the fireworks, right?"

"I think so."

Lexa stood up then, closing the distance between herself and Anya while the others were distracted by their texts that would bring more strangers to this intimate little grouping. She wanted no part of it. "I'm ready to go home," she said.

Anya looked at her and nodded. "Me too."

"You're not going to stay for the fireworks?" Lincoln asked, when they told him that they were going.

"There's been plenty of fireworks for one night for us," Anya said. "We'll see you in class."

"Sure thing," he said. "Happy New Year."

It was only then that the girls really seemed to see her, and she turned and walked away before either of them could say a word.


	15. Clarke

When Bellamy asked what happened, they lied. Or, more accurately, Octavia lied, and Clarke went along with it. "He's overprotective as it is," Octavia said. "The last thing I need is to give him a reason to be."

"But—" Clarke had started, but Octavia had shot her a glare that shut her up. She knew that she should say something, even though it might damage her friendship with Octavia, but when she really thought about it, what were the odds that this guy... and what had happened with him, anyway? where was he now?... would show up again? He was probably just some guy in the city for the festivities, right? Half of the population of the city was part of the university in some way, or at least it often seemed like that, and if he was a student (or a member of the faculty, she guessed) he wouldn't stir up trouble like that somewhere where he might be noticed later on, right?

In the end she'd decided that her loyalty to Octavia outweighed any obligation she might have to Bellamy... at least for now. If it happened again, though, all bets were off. But it wasn't going to happen again. It couldn't.

"I tripped," Octavia said, when Bellamy and Finn and the others found them at their bench. "Look, the fireworks are starting!" Which had been enough to shut him up for the fifteen or twenty minutes that they lasted, but not longer. 

"Look, you were right, okay?" Octavia said when her brother turned his gaze back on her. "I shouldn't have worn these heels. They got stuck and I twisted by ankle, and Lincoln here saw me go down and he helped me up and got me over to this bench." 

Except Lincoln was gone, and when had he slipped away? It must have been during the fireworks. But why would he leave? Wouldn't he want to stick around and make sure that Octavia was okay? He'd seemed... Well, what did Clarke know about people? She had already had it proven to her in the past week that she didn't know all that much about anyone, including – especially – the person she should theoretically know best. 

"You're not going back home tonight," Bellamy said. "It's late, you've been drinking – don't try to tell me you haven't, because I saw you – and so has Clarke, which means there's no designated driver."

Clarke was pretty sure that all of the alcohol in her system had been burned up all at once when she'd heard Octavia's muffled scream, but she knew – medically – that it didn't work that way. She might feel sober now, but as soon as the adrenaline rush flushed out of her system, she was going to crash, and it was better if it wasn't while she was driving. Especially since even if Octavia was awake and sober enough to take over, she couldn't.

"Also, I want to see what your ankle looks like in the morning," Bellamy said. "I won't make you go now, but if it looks really bad in the morning, we're going to go get it X-rayed. Just in case."

"It's not broken," Octavia said. 

"Just in case," Bellamy repeated. "So for now we're going back to the frat and getting you some ice. There are plenty of rooms that aren't occupied at the moment, since most of the guys still aren't back, so you'll have a place to sleep that isn't on a couch or the floor. You too, Clarke."

"Thanks," she said. 

When Octavia had tried to stand, they knew right away that it wasn't happening. If she'd been wearing flats, it might have been okay, but not heels, and although the night was relatively mild for this time of year, it was still too cold for her to be walking around barefoot. So she wrapped her arms around Bellamy's neck and he carried her on his back to Clarke's car. "Give me your keys," he said. 

"You've been drinking, too," she said.

"Actually, I haven't," Bellamy replied. "Someone has to be the responsible one."

"Who's going to drive your car?" she asked. 

"I'll come back and get it tomorrow," he said. "It was a flat rate for parking, so it doesn't matter."

She sighed and gave him her keys. It was easier than arguing. 

"Do you want me to come with you?" Finn asked, suddenly at her side, so close she could feel the warmth of his breath against her cheek. Too close. She shifted half a step so she could turn and look at him. 

"Aren't we all going the same place?" she asked.

"Well, yeah," Finn said. "But I could walk if I had to. It's not that far."

"Which begs the question why you all came in a car in the first place." 

Finn shrugged. "Because it's not that close, either, and we figured it might be easier than all of us stumbling the two miles home after midnight." 

"You can ride with us," Clarke said.

Octavia got the front seat, because she needed room to stretch out her leg, and Bellamy drove, which left her and Finn in the backseat. The space between them felt huge and too small at once, and when he reached across it to touch her hand, she didn't pull away. 

"Let Bellamy take care of Octavia," he said softly as they got out of the car. "You know he's going to anyway."

"What am I supposed to do?" Clarke asked. "She's my friend, and—" _And I'm not allowed to finish that sentence. Right. But she's my friend and if I'd been paying more attention, if I hadn't let her go into that bathroom alone, this wouldn't have happened._

"Let me take care of you," Finn said. "You've had a rough night, too."

"It wasn't all bad," she said. "Just the end of it."

"When Octavia 'fell'." 

She could hear the quotes in his voice, and remembered then that he had actually been there when she'd gotten Octavia's original texts, and when she'd found her the first time. He knew what had really been going on, and the likelihood that he believed that Octavia had just fallen later on... Well, it wasn't completely implausible, but it also wasn't entirely likely, especially with how shaken up she was sure they both had looked. 

"Right," she said. "Look... she doesn't want to freak Bellamy out, okay? And it's hers to tell if she wants to, or not. Not mine, and not yours. Unless you already...?"

"I didn't," Finn said. "I didn't want to freak him out either." His smile was grim. "But that's what happened, isn't it? She didn't fall."

"I wasn't there," Clarke admitted. "I waited outside the bathroom for her, and somehow lost track of her. Then I heard her scream – it might have been my name – and then... I mean, maybe she fell, if she was running from him. Maybe it's not completely a lie. But... yeah, he found her again. Whoever he was."

"How did you get away?"

"That guy Lincoln," Clarke said. "And a couple of his friends. They chased him off or something."

"Got it." Finn put his hand on her back and guided her inside, where Bell and Octavia had long since disappeared. "Do you want a drink or something?"

Clarke shook her head. The answer was yes, she wanted a drink, but she also knew that having one wasn't the best idea right now. "I'm okay."

"You're not," Finn said. "You're shaking. I can feel it."

He wasn't wrong. She'd been trying to ignore it, but pretty much from the moment she'd gotten in the car, she'd started trembling, and it was getting worse, not better. "I should probably just lay down," she said. "It's late."

"I can find a room for you," Finn said. "Or..." He looked at her, and she knew what he was asking. 

"Okay," she said. Because she didn't want to be alone tonight, and the other alternative was crawling into bed with Octavia, which she wasn't sure her friend would appreciate. Or maybe she would, and maybe she should find out. "Hold on."

Octavia took one look at her and rolled her eyes before Clarke could even open her mouth. "I'm _fine_ ," she said. "Seriously. Go do your thing."

"You shouldn't call him a thing," Clarke joked lamely. "It's not nice."

Octavia snorted. "Be safe," she said.

"Always am," Clarke replied. She wasn't even sure that that's what she wanted right now, but she wasn't sure it wasn't, either. It might make her forget what had happened, what _could_ have happened, for a little while, right? 

Finn didn't push. He offered her a t-shirt and a pair of his boxers to sleep in, and she took them, but once they were in the bed together, they came right back off again, and she knew that this wasn't the world's healthiest coping mechanism, but it wasn't the world's _un_ healthiest one, either. It felt good, and after, sleep was deep and dreamless.

This time when she woke up, she wasn't alone. Finn's arms were around her, her back curled into his chest, and she fit there almost perfectly. She pressed back against him, and felt his arms tighten around her and his lips brush the back of her neck, and it sent a shiver down her spine. 

"I need to pee," she whispered, and he grumbled and groaned but let her up. She grabbed the boxers he'd lent her from the floor and tugged them on (somehow the shirt was already back on, which she didn't remember doing, but obviously she must have) and went to find the bathroom. On the way, she saw that the door of one of the rooms was ajar, and she peered in.

Octavia was asleep, her dark hair splayed across one pillow, her arms wrapped tightly around another like she was using it in place of a teddy bear or something else to hold. Clarke finished her trek to the bathroom, but instead of going back to Finn, she ducked into Octavia's room, sliding in under the blankets.

Octavia shifted, her eyes blinking halfway open, and she ditched the pillow and snuggled against Clarke instead. "Thanks," she whispered, which felt more intimate than maybe it should have because Octavia's face was basically tucked into her neck. "For... for helping me. And for not telling Bell."

"You're welcome," Clarke said, brushing back a stray lock of Octavia's hair.

"Do you think he'll ever show up again?" Octavia asked. 

"The guy who was following you?" Clarke asked. Octavia shrugged, but she took that to be a yes. "I hope not. I really hope not."

"Me too," Octavia said. "What about... What about Lincoln?"

"I don't know," Clarke said. "Maybe. He could be a student here."

Octavia seemed to perk up a little at the thought of that. "Maybe. And Lincoln isn't exactly a common name. Unless maybe it's his last name. That could make it harder. But if I asked around..."

"Do you _want_ to see him again?" Clarke asked.

"He kind of saved my life," Octavia said. "So yeah. I'd like to say thank you. I didn't really, last night. I mean, I did, but not... not as much as I should have. So I owe him that."

"You don't owe him anything," Clarke said. "But if you want to find him... just let me know if there's anything I can do to help." 

Octavia's arms tightened around her. "Thanks," she said. "I knew I could count on you."

_Can you really?_ , Clarke wondered, knowing how she'd let Octavia down the night before. _If Lincoln and his friends hadn't been there..._

She guessed Octavia wasn't the only one who owed him her gratitude.


	16. Lexa

As soon as they got back, Anya went to the freezer and pulled out an ice pack, wrapped it in a towel and handed it to Lexa. "Put it on your knuckles," she said. "I don't think you're going to want to have to explain why they're all bruised up."

"Who would ask?" Lexa countered, but she did as she was told anyway. It stung, because in a few places the skin had been rubbed raw, maybe by the material of his coat, maybe by facial hair. She didn't know. She didn't care. "We shouldn't have left him there."

"What should we have done?" Anya asked. "Called the police, knowing that the girl wasn't going to tell them what had happened, so the only thing they saw was that you had started to beat the shit out of him, and probably would have continued until he was unconscious – at best – if I hadn't stopped you."

"I would have stopped when he stopped fighting back," Lexa said. 

"He wasn't fighting back," Anya said. "He was on the ground. You were on top of him. He wasn't fighting back."

"I wasn't giving him the chance to," Lexa said. "If I'd stopped, he would have, or he would have gotten up and ran – which is what we let him do anyway. I was keeping him from hurting anyone. Maybe now he'll think twice before going after a girl like that."

Anya sighed. "That's not how this works," she said. "You have the training. You know how to inflict a lot of pain on a person in a very short period of time. But the whole point is that you don't use it unless you have to. You don't use it unless it's absolutely necessary."

"You think this wasn't necessary?"

"What is the meaning of black belt, Lexa?"

"I don't see what that has to do with anything, Anya," she snapped, inwardly wincing at how petulant and snotty it came out.

"Yes, you do," Anya replied. "You know exactly what it has to do with this. What is the meaning of black belt?"

"We're not in the dojang." 

"The world is our dojang. You don't stop being a black belt, or a martial artist, just because you take the belt off and walk out of the school. Answer the question."

"You're not my teacher," Lexa said. 

"I outrank you. Answer. The damn. Question."

Lexa grit her teeth. "'Black belt signifies maturity, and proficiency in Tae Kwon Do. The black belt student must be on the side of righteousness, and help other people in need. The black belt student must not show off their knowledge of Tae Kwon Do to any person, in any situation, without proper and righteous cause,'" she recited.

Anya just looked at her, waited. 

"Do you think that what we did wasn't helping someone in need?" Lexa asked. "Do you think that we didn't have proper and righteous cause? What part are you objecting to? Because I don't get it."

"If a police officer did the same thing that you did, and someone saw it, what do you think would happen?"

"Nothing," Lexa said.

Anya let out a frustrated sigh. "Okay, fine, the way things are these days, you're probably right. But what do you think _should_ happen? In a world where things are as they should be, if a police officer got a man down like that – using the appropriate amount of force – and then just started punching him like that, do you think that it would be seen as justified? Or do you think that he might be charged with use of excessive force?"

"What did you want me to do, then?" Lexa asked. "If you're such an expert."

"You had him down," Anya said. "Just hold him there. If I hadn't been so busy worrying that you were going to do something that you would probably end up regretting – and it scares me that I have to say _probably_ – I might have been able to talk to the girl, convince her that it was in her best interests to report it to the police, to have something done about it instead of just leaving the guy there, so that he's still out there, possibly picking up where he left off."

"I don't think he's doing much of anything tonight," Lexa said. 

"Then tomorrow, or the next day," Anya said. "My point is, you didn't make anything better tonight."

"You don't know that," Lexa said. "Maybe he's learned his lesson."

Another frustrated rush of breath. "What about you, Lexa? Do you feel better? Does it change anything? Because—"

"Don't," Lexa said. "I don't need the lecture. You're the one who made me go out tonight. You're the one who thinks that I need to get out in the world, try to act like everything is okay, everything is normal, just because the sun still rises in the east every morning. You wanted me to go out, so I went, and this is what happened. I don't regret it."

"That's what I'm worried about," Anya said. "I'm going to bed."

Lexa watched her go... and then watched her stop at the end of the hallway, turning sideways as she got to her bedroom door so that her words could be heard clearly, even if she didn't – couldn't? wouldn't? didn't want to? – look Lexa in the face. "You know where to find me if you need me."

 _I don't need you,_ Lexa told her, but not out loud. _I don't need anyone._

But sleep wouldn't come, and when it finally did, it was so laced with nightmares that it was hardly sleep at all. Somewhere after five, when the outside world was still dark and any sane person – especially any sane person who had been up past midnight – was still snug in their bed, asleep... probably for a few more hours even... Lexa was up. All told, she'd slept maybe two hours, and that was probably being optimistic. 

She left her room and stopped at Anya's door, raising her hand to knock, then letting it drop. Anya _said_ she was there if Lexa needed her, but how could she know that she meant it, really? No one wanted to be woken up at this hour, especially when there was no good reason for it. Nothing was on fire. No one had died. There wasn't any kind of giant bug in the bathroom that needed dealing with. 

There was no reason for her to knock on the door... except that she couldn't be alone right now. She could just turn on the TV and let it keep her company, but... But it wasn't the same. They weren't _real_ people. If she talked to them, they wouldn't answer back, even if it was just to lecture her on how she was failing at being a human being.

Did Anya think that she didn't know that? Did she think that it was news to Lexa that she was getting everything wrong? She'd managed in Australia, somehow. She'd forced herself to be functional. Hell, she'd even gotten pretty good at it. Why wasn't it working now? 

Maybe Anya was the problem. Maybe the fact that she _did_ have someone to lean on, a crutch, someone coddling her as if she could be protected from this, maybe that was the problem. 

But was Anya coddling her? She kept pushing at her, making her go out... trying to hold her accountable for her actions. And yes, she made sure that she ate, and tried to make sure that she slept (which wasn't something either of them really had any control over, was it?) but was that coddling, or was that just caring? Did it make her a crutch that Lexa was leaning on? Or did it just make them... friends?

In Australia she'd functioned because she'd had to. She had no one to rely on but herself, so she'd had to step up. Now she was falling apart, because she knew that she could. So maybe Anya was the problem after all.

She went back to bed.

She slept. She woke again... and saw that only forty minutes had passed. Not even an hour, and she'd had a nightmare so bad that she could actually see where the pounding of her heart sent shock waves through the material of her t-shirt, which was soaked with sweat. She got up and peeled it off, pulling on a clean one, and a hoodie over it.

She got up again, and this time she made herself knock. This wasn't working... none of it... and she had to tell Anya that. She had to tell her that if she was going to do this, she had to do it her way. She had to do it on her own. 

Anya's voice on the other side of the door was muffled, but Lexa assumed that what she said was 'come in', and if it wasn't, well... she had to go in anyway, because she had to have this conversation, had to get it over with. Like tearing off a Band-Aid. Better to just tear it off all at once than to peel it away slowly, millimeter by agonizing millimeter. 

She stepped in, and saw that Anya had rolled on her side, eyes half-lidded, creases in her face where wrinkles in her pillowcase had impressed themselves. She was holding back the blankets. "Come here."

"I..." She froze. This wasn't how this was supposed to go. She was supposed to tell Anya that she was leaving. Anya was supposed to make a few token objections but secretly be relieved. And then they would go their separate ways.

"Lexa." Anya's eyes opened more fully. "It's not even six, and you were up all night. Come here."

"No," Lexa said. "This... I can't. I can't."

"You can," Anya said. "And you need to. You need to sleep, and alone isn't working. Come here."

Lexa came, because she could pretend all she wanted that she was grown up and didn't need anyone, but sometimes... sometimes she was just a little girl and sometimes she wanted what she'd never really had, even when she was actually a little girl. Sometimes she just wanted someone else to be there. And she'd had that for a little while, and then she'd lost it, and now it was being offered again and it wasn't the same, but it was something, wasn't it? It was something.

"Lexa, please," Anya said. "It's getting cold." Because she was still holding up the blanket, still waiting for Lexa to crawl in, to join her in the cave of blankets and hibernate, if only for a few hours. 

"I can't," Lexa said, but it came out almost a sob, and she swallowed hard. "Please."

Anya sat up and reached out a hand, and Lexa took it, and then she reached out the other and Lexa took that too, and she let herself be pulled close, and then closer, and they weren't people who hugged except maybe they were? For a few seconds anyway.

The blankets were as warm as they looked, Lexa discovered, and the weight of them was soothing. 

They slept back to back... but they – she, Lexa, queen of nightmares – slept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Re: The Meaning of Black Belt
> 
> This is by no means universal. There are TKD schools who don't teach any kind of meaning for any particular belt. There may be different schools that have different meanings. This is the meaning that we're taught at my school, and since it served the plot, I used it. But other dojangs may vary, and I am not in any way attempting to speak for all of TKD-dom with it. ☺


	17. Clarke

Clarke couldn't decide whether she was glad to be back at school or not. On one hand, it meant that she would actually have structure again, and routine, and a space that was her own... or mostly her own. Not that staying with the Blakes had been bad, but there was nothing that could make sleeping in Bellamy's room, in his bed, even without him in it (which... ew), not weird. So being back in her own almost sort of pseudo-comfortable dorm bed would be nice. At least her sheets would smell like her, and not Boy.

But on the other hand, there was the whole boy thing. More specifically, the Finn thing. Which was a thing? Unless it wasn't. He seemed to want it to be, and she wasn't opposed to the idea, but... it just seemed weird. Off. And that was her fault, for going into it in the wrong state of mind, and continuing it in an equally wrong state of mind, and just... yeah.

And then on the other other hand there were classes, which was good and bad. Some were good, some were bad, and some... some she would just have to wait and see. She was still doing a lot of gen eds at this point, and those tended to be a pretty mixed bag. At least she had her history class with Octavia. She wasn't sure how she felt about military history, but it was the least of the evils that fit the requirement _and_ fit into her schedule, and maybe it could be interesting? Apparently they did a lot of reading of historical fiction and memoirs and stuff, not just out of a dry, dull, textbook. So maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

"Why did you take so much stuff _home_?" she grumbled, trying to drag her suitcase with one hand and lug a big plastic tote of Octavia's stuff in the other, while that _other_ other hand (that didn't actually exist) fumbled for her keys.

She glanced up, hoping that there would be someone there to help them out and let them in, and stopped dead. Octavia crashed into her, nearly sending everything they were both holding flying. "What the hell, Griffin?" she demanded. "You can't just— Oh."

Because she'd looked up too, and now she saw what had stopped Clarke in her tracks. 

"Um. Hi. Mrs. – Dr. Griffin," Octavia managed. "Nice to see you again."

"Did you girls need a hand?" she asked, approaching with a smile. "It looks like you might need an extra set."

"Should you be doing any lifting in your condition?" Clarke asked, and the words were sharp, aiming to wound.

But her mother's skin was too thick. She just rolled her eyes and pulled the tote from Clarke's arms. "Why don't you get the door, sweetie?" she asked. 

Maybe not so thick, then, because she only started using terms of endearment like that when Clarke was getting on her nerves. Which was a great sign, really, that they were already pissing each other off and they had been together for less than a minute.

Clarke unlocked the door, and they rode the elevator up to the fifth floor where their room was located. Usually they took the stairs (fighting the freshman fifteen, Octavia called it; Clarke called it torture, but her legs had never been this toned in her life, so maybe there was something to it) but they had too much stuff and it was just easier.

"Thanks," Octavia said when Abby set down the plastic bin. 

"Of course," she said. "You don't mind if I steal Clarke for a little bit, do you?"

"Of course not," Octavia said, forcing a smile. 

"Thanks." Abby smiled at her. "Maybe you can join us for dinner later."

"I would like that," Octavia said, and Clarke couldn't tell if she was just being polite, or if she really meant it. 

"We'll see you soon, then," Abby said, and turned toward the door. 

For a minute, Clarke thought about just shutting the door behind her, locking it and pretending that she didn't exist, but she knew that her mother was every bit as stubborn as she was, and she would just wait Clarke out, knowing that she would have to emerge eventually. Better to just get it over with. She followed her out into the hall. "What?"

"We need to talk, Clarke," she said. 

"So talk."

"Not here," her mom said. "Let's go for a walk."

Clarke didn't want to walk. She didn't want to walk, she didn't want to talk, she didn't want to have some kind of heart-to-heart where they discussed their feelings and cleared the air and whatever else mothers and daughters were supposed to periodically do over manicures or tea parties or whatever. Clarke didn't know, because Abby Griffin was not now, nor had she ever been, that kind of mom. 

It wasn't that Clarke didn't think she loved her. She was sure that she did, and if it came right down to it, she would try to move heaven and earth for her daughter... as long as it was make sure that Clarke was able to continue to follow the path that she'd set out for her. Which maybe wasn't a fair assessment, maybe wasn't even really true, but that's how it felt.

They walked down to the path that ran along the edge of the river, which wasn't particularly busy today, since it was overcast and blustery. There were a few joggers out, and some people on bicycles, but they appeared to be the only ones out moving at a leisurely pace.

"I wanted to give you your space," her mom said. "I know that you're smart, and you're responsible, and that you have friends in the area to stay with, so I decided that I wasn't going to worry about where you were or what you were doing. I decided I would give you some time to calm down, work through it, and then we would talk. I waited for you to reach out, Clarke, hoping that you would decide to be an adult about this. When that failed to happen, I decided that the only way I was going to get the chance to talk to you was by showing up and forcing you into it. So here I am."

"Where is _he_?" Clarke asked. 

"He's at work," Abby replied. "Working."

"Why aren't you at work, then?"

"I took the day off. I told them that I had some family matters to attend to, and I hardly use my vacation time anyway, so they gave me the day off."

"Great."

"I knew you'd think so," Abby replied, and the sarcasm dripped from the words. "So are you going to be an adult about this?" she asked. "Or are you going to throw another temper tantrum?"

"Screw you," Clarke said. "You want me to act like an adult, then why don't you treat me like one?"

"I have been treating you like an adult this entire time, Clarke," Abby replied. "I thought that you were going to be mature about this."

"I thought I was, too," Clarke said. "I thought, when I finally decided to talk to you again, that I would tell you that it was fine, I didn't mind at all, that I was happy for you. And maybe I would have, if you'd given me the chance. But you didn't. You showed up, and now you're demanding that I say those things whether I mean them or not, because if I don't I'm being childish. I'm being immature. I'm quote-unquote throwing a temper tantrum."

"You stormed out of the house," Abby said. "What else would you call that?"

"Removing myself from a situation that made me profoundly uncomfortable," Clarke said. "Which I'm pretty sure it's my right _as an adult_ to do."

"In my car," Abby pointed out.

"It's my car," Clarke said. "Dad gave it to _me_."

"It's registered in my name," Abby said. "The insurance is under my name as well. So it's my car."

"So sell it to me," Clarke said. "If it's such a problem, sell me the car and I'll get my own insurance, and—"

"That's not the point, Clarke," Abby said. "You know that that's not the point."

"What _is_ the point?" Clarke asked. "Because I don't get it. I don't get how I'm supposed to handle it when I walk into the house where I grew up with my parents and discover that someone else is pretty much living there, taking up the space that used to belong to my father, and that my mom has decided it's time to move on and, and start a whole new family, but instead of telling me what's going on, she decides she'll just let me figure out what's going on on my own. Because that makes so much more sense. Instead of confronting something head-on, better to just ignore it and hope it goes away, right? Except then I _did_ go away, and that pissed you off even more."

Abby looked at her and sighed, pushing her hair back out of her face. "I didn't mean for you to find out that way," she said. "I really didn't. I... I was glad to have you home, and I didn't want to make things immediately awkward, so I decided I would just wait a little while to tell you. Let you get used to the idea of me being with someone else first. Let you get to know him. I think you'll like him, once you give him a chance. I guess I should have told him sooner that you didn't know yet."

"So that he could lie to me, too? Because that would have made everything better. Right." Clarke shook her head, stuffing her hands into her pockets. "Look. You can do what you want. Be with him, have a kid, kids, whatever... That's your life. You should live it. Just because Dad died doesn't mean that we stop living, right? That's what you kept telling me? Because maybe if you could get me to believe it you could stop feeling guilty about how not guilty you felt over everything that happened."

"Clarke..." 

She couldn't tell if it was supposed to be a warning, and even if it was, she wasn't planning on stopping. But when she opened her mouth again, nothing came out. Maybe she'd said all that she needed or wanted to say. Maybe she was just too tired to get into this now. Maybe...

"It's your life," she repeated. "You do what you need to do. I'll do what I need to do. I'm sure that our paths will cross again at some point."

"At some point?" Abby looked ready to reach out and shake her. "Clarke, I'm your mother. You're my daughter, my only—"

"Not for long," Clarke said into the silence that followed the abruptly cut off sentence. "Soon you'll have _it_ to worry about."

"The baby is not an 'it'," Abby said. 

"Fine," Clarke said. "They. Them. Soon you'll have _them_ to worry about. Singular non-gender specific pronoun. Unless you're having twins. Then you're number one, not going to have the grammar police after you, telling you that you're wrong even though singular they has been used for centuries, and number two, screwed."

"Lord," Abby breathed, "I hope not."

Clarke shrugged. "So does he live there with you?"

"No," Abby said. "Not officially. He still has his condo."

"Is he going to?"

"We're looking for a place."

"What's going to happen to the house?"

"I think it's time to let it go, Clarke," Abby said, and she knew that her mother was trying to be as gentle as she could about it, but there was no way to be gentle with this kind of thing. Like tearing off a Band-Aid. "I think we both need to move on."

"Easy for you to say," Clarke said. "And do. Obviously."

"Do you think this is easy, Clarke? Really? Wanting to be happy and knowing that I can't be because I'm too worried about how you're going to react?"

"Oh, so you _did_ think about me somewhere in all of this?"

"Of course I thought about you, Clarke! I think about you every single day. But you're at school now. You're not around. And even when you were, things weren't..." She sighed. "When I found out, I panicked. I didn't tell him until I was at eight, almost nine weeks. I didn't... I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. But this... this is a good thing, Clarke. I think it is. For me. I know that it's a big change, and I know it won't be easy, but can you please try to at least be a little bit happy? For me?"

"I can try," Clarke said. But she couldn't resist one final, petty parting shot. "Maybe this time around you'll get it right."


	18. Lexa

Lexa got out of the shower, wrapped her hair in a towel and the rest of herself in a robe, and padded across the hall to her room. Before she could shut the door, she heard Anya call her name from the living room (or maybe it was the kitchen, it was hard to tell and it was basically all one big room anyway). 

She stopped, took the few steps to the end of the hallway and looked in. "What?"

"Come out when you're done," Anya said. "I made pie."

"Okay," Lexa said, even though she wasn't sure it was okay at all, because sometimes pie was just pie, and sometimes it was a way to lure her into a conversation that she didn't want to have, or at least to lure her into Anya's vicinity long enough for Anya to attempt to have a conversation with her. But the pie smelled good, and Lexa had sort of forgotten dinner because Anya was out. So she would be a good girl and do as she was told, and take her chances with the possibility of this turning into a 'We need to talk' situation.

She dried off and pulled on pajamas, the top a soft old t-shirt that maybe had once been her father's, or maybe it had just turned up in the laundry at some point, mixed in with hers because it got left behind in a laundromat or laundry room and she hadn't noticed, and the bottoms soft and fleecy and marked with skulls and crossbones. She put on her slippers and tugged a hoodie over all of it, and went out to see a girl about a pie.

"Do you want ice cream with it?" Anya asked. "Or cheese?"

"Cheese?"

"It's some weird New England thing," Anya said, "but it's actually pretty good. Cheddar cheese and hot apple pie."

"I'll have ice cream."

"Coming right up." A minute later Anya slid the plate across the breakfast bar-peninsula-whatever you want to call it, and got her own slice. "You want to go in the living room?"

"I'm in the living room," Lexa said. "You're in the kitchen."

Anya rolled her eyes. "Okay, smartass," she said. "Do you want to go to the couch?"

Lexa shrugged, but got up and took her pie over to the couch, curling up against one arm and drawing her knees up so that she could balance her plate there as she ate. She kept her attention on her food, trying to project an aura of 'do not talk to me', but of course it didn't work. If Anya noticed, she ignored it, which she was pretty damn good at. A lot better than pretty much anyone else Lexa had ever met. Usually if she wanted to be left alone, she was.

"What time is your first class tomorrow?" Anya asked.

"You don't know?" Lexa asked. "I thought you'd memorized my schedule."

"I can barely keep mine straight," Anya said, which Lexa knew was a lie because Anya was one of the most organized, meticulous people that she knew. It was part of why they'd gotten along so well when they first met – they were both control freaks, and had to have things a certain way. They stuck to routines and only deviated when they had to, and not always terribly gracefully. They adapted to new situations because they had to, mostly by doing everything that they could to create order in chaos as quickly as possible.

"It's at ten," Lexa said. "Why?"

Anya shrugged, and that was another lie, because it gave the impression that she hadn't asked for any particular reason, but Anya didn't ask questions without a reason. "I just wanted to make sure that we left in time, that's all."

"You have to meet with one of the professors that's you're TA-ing for at nine," Lexa said, because she pretty much _had_ memorized Anya's schedule one day when she'd left it out, not because she needed or even necessarily wanted to know it, but because she'd just sort of gotten stuck and that's what her eyes had fixed on and once it was all in her head she'd unfrozen, and she didn't tell Anya about it because she didn't figure that it really mattered, it was just a weird thing that happened sometimes. It wasn't physical; she wasn't sick. It was all in her head.

"I know," Anya said. "But if you had class at eight, we would need to leave earlier. That's all. Believe me, I can find things to do to keep myself busy if that happens."

"What are you talking about, 'we'?" Lexa asked. "You're going to go to your meeting at nine. I'm going to go to class at ten. There's no 'we' in this."

"Did you get a car while I wasn't looking?" Anya asked. "If not, then how else were you planning to get to campus?"

"I was planning to walk," Lexa said. 

"It's cold."

"I'll live."

"I can give you a ride."

"I don't need one."

They were staring at each other, trying to stare each other down, or at least that's what Lexa was trying to do. Anya... maybe she was trying to see inside of Lexa's head, trying to figure out what was going on there, how to change it, how to fix it. Maybe not. But neither of them would look away now. They were locked into battle, trying to out-stubborn each other.

It was Lexa who lost, but only because Anya cheated. She reached out and put her hand on Lexa's arm, and Lexa looked down at it, and then scowled because she'd been tricked into dropping her gaze. They weren't people who touched. Especially not like this. 

Anya was breaking the rules.

And she knew it.

"You don't trust me," Lexa said. "You think that if you leave the house and I'm still here, I won't actually go to class."

"Yes," Anya said. "I think that you will get to the door, and stop, and decide that you're not ready. Or you'll get halfway there and turn around and come back. Or you'll get to campus and see something that reminds you of her, and you'll balk, and you won't do what you need to do."

At least she was being honest about it. It didn't mean that Lexa liked it, but at least Anya wasn't trying to pretend that it wasn't true. 

"So you're going to make sure that I get to campus, and then what? You're going to walk me to class? Wait outside and make sure that I don't walk back out again? You can't watch me every minute," Lexa said. 

"No, I can't," Anya said, still calm, and Lexa wished that she could figure out what buttons to push to get her to get frustrated, get angry, to snap. This unflappable calm was maddening, because she knew that it was, at least in part, an act. This was a mask that Anya was wearing to try and soothe her, to placate her, to be an almost blank wall for Lexa to throw things at and they would just bounce off, like none of it touched her, like nothing reached beyond the surface.

Or maybe she was just projecting. She was pretty sure that was a solid armchair psychology analysis. 

"But I think once you're there, once you have something to focus on, it won't be so hard. I think it's just getting there, getting past all of the possible pitfalls between here and there, that's likely to trip you up. And if I can help ease that at all..." Anya let her shoulders rise, then fall. "You have to do this, Lexa. You just don't have to do it alone."

"Maybe I want to," Lexa said. "Maybe I want to do it alone. Maybe all I've wanted all along was to be _left alone_ , and you just keep pushing, keep... keep..." _Keep **being** there. Like you have some sort of obligation to me, to make sure that I'm okay. Like I'm somehow your responsibility. Like... like you **care** or something, when you have no reason to. I sure as hell haven't given you one. So why? Why do you do this, keep doing this? Why are you still here when everyone else is gone?_

But she couldn't say that. She couldn't say any of that. 

"Maybe that's what you wanted," Anya said, "but it wasn't what you needed. And maybe I haven't gotten it all right, but someone.... someone had to be there for you, and I didn't see anyone else stepping up." She took her hand away from Lexa's arm, and had it really been there all that time? Had it been seconds? Or was it minutes, or hours? 

Sometimes time didn't flow right. 

Maybe she really was losing it.

"So if I let you give me a ride tomorrow, let you walk me to class, let you meet me after so you can be sure I didn't leave... then what?"

"Then we figure out what happens the next day. And the day after that, and the day after that. Until it's a routine. Until it starts to feel normal again."

_Nothing will ever feel normal again._

"And maybe when the days start adding up, I'll be able to stop worrying every time I leave the house and leave you here that I'll come home and find you gone."

Lexa looked at her again, searching her eyes for the truth, but there it was, the mask stripped away for a moment, and it was written all over Anya's face how much she worried about Lexa leaving, how much she didn't want that to happen. 

Why? She wasn't... they weren't... 

It didn't make sense. No matter how much Lexa turned it over in her head, it didn't make sense. 

"Would that really be so bad?" she asked. "You could have the place to yourself."

"I don't want the place to myself," Anya said. "Who would eat my cooking?"

It was a joke, sort of, or at least Anya was trying to smile, and Lexa tried to smile back. They were both pretty far from the mark. 

"I'm not ready to give up on your yet, Lexa," Anya said. "Even if you've given up on yourself."


	19. Clarke

One of the first things that most people learned about Clarke was that it was better not to try to speak to her until after she was at least halfway through her first cup of coffee. It wasn't that she would be grumpy and rude; she wouldn't, or at least she would try not to be. It was just that she was far less likely to comprehend what was being said to her than if she'd had a chance to jumpstart her brain with caffeine, and retaining anything was unlikely without a little bit of a boost.

So when Finn slid into the booth across from her only seconds after she'd sat down, she just stared at him blankly for a second, as if she wasn't quite sure who he was. He was out of context, and it threw her off. "Good morning," he said cheerfully.

"Morning," she mumbled back, forcing herself through the fog to arrive at the conclusion that he was likely expecting her to be happy to see him. "What are you doing here?"

Finn shrugged. "I thought I would grab a snack," he said. "Even though I don't live in the dorms, I can use the dining hall. I just have to pay for it."

"And you couldn't find somewhere better to eat with the money?" Clarke asked.

"Better quality, maybe," Finn said, "but not better value. I mean, this is all you can eat. And I'm a growing boy – I can eat a lot."

"Are you?" Clarke asked. "I guess it's possible. Some men continue to grow through their early twenties. But I would think if you were still growing, you would be taller." She didn't think about the fact that he might take that as insulting until the words were already out of her mouth, and she could see Octavia smirking in her head even though she wasn't there. _Great,_ she thought. _We've developed some kind of Vulcan mind-meld or something._ Or maybe they just knew each other too well.

"Then why don't you have any food?" she asked. 

"I wanted to say hi first," Finn replied. "I saw you come in and decided hey, you know what? Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, right? And a Pop-tart probably wasn't what they were thinking of when they – whoever _they_ are – said that."

Clarke made a sound somewhere between agreement and a grunt. "It's better on the weekends," she said. 

"Isn't everything?" Finn asked. "Be right back."

And then he was up with far too much energy for this hour of the morning, and Clarke sat sipping her coffee, wondering if this was all as weird as it felt or if she was just being hypersensitive and a little bit paranoid. Just... the idea of him coming in after he'd seen her go in should maybe have made her feel warm and fuzzy, but after what had happened with Octavia, the idea of someone keeping an eye out for her like that, or making changes to their plans just because of her whereabouts... 

She was probably just being dumb. Maybe she would ask Octavia later, although it was still kind of a touchy subject. Not that they hadn't talked about it, but what was there really to say, beyond Clarke apologizing at least a dozen times for not going with her, not staying at her side the whole time, and Octavia telling her that it was okay, that she was fine (her ankle had healed up completely, and thankfully without too many questions from her mom, who probably wouldn't have approved of the fact that there was alcohol involved, even though Octavia should have been safe to walk around in whatever she wanted, in whatever state of sobriety she chose, without fear) and that she was sure it wouldn't happen again. But then Clarke would hear her tossing and turning in the middle of the night. She hoped once they got busy with classes, Octavia would be able to stop thinking – and dreaming – about it.

Finn came back with a tray, and he dug in, smiling at her. She picked at her own breakfast, trying to decide if it was really as unappetizing as it seemed. She looked at Finn and tried to figure out why she wasn't as happy as she should be to see him. After New Year's, she'd come to campus a few times and they'd gone on a few dates, and she'd had fun, hadn't she? A movie and dinner, going out to play pool... they'd had a good time. And if she was being completely honest with herself, she liked not sleeping alone. She liked waking up with someone next to her, warm and alive and (at least for the moment) hers. 

So why did she feel like she was waiting for the other shoe to drop? Why did she feel like she couldn't commit to this, like she couldn't just throw herself into this relationship (was it a relationship? Could she really call it anything else?) wholeheartedly? She'd tried telling herself it was just because she didn't want it interfering with her schoolwork, but the truth was none of the classes she was taking at this point were likely to be so time-consuming or mentally taxing that going out once in a while might take away from the time she needed to spend on them.

And endorphins were good for you, and sitting in front of her she had a ready source of them.

So she tried to have a normal conversation with him, talking about his classes and how they were going (not that they're really gotten past reading the syllabi at this point; it was only the second day back) and how he'd had to declare his major but he still wasn't one hundred percent sure about it, and how Clarke didn't get that, because she'd known what she was going to go to school for since she was... pretty much since always.

"And you never wanted anything else?" Finn asked. "You never thought about giving anything else a try?"

Clarke shrugged. "Not for a career, no," she said. "I have hobbies, but that's all they are. Things to do in my downtime. Not that I'm likely to get much of that once I really hit medical school, and then internships and fellowships and residencies and all of that."

"Do you know what kind of medicine you want to go into?" Finn asked. 

"No. That I haven't figured out yet. Once I've gone through a few rotations, I figure I'll probably find my niche."

"And if you don't? What if you decide that you hate it? Do you have something else to fall back on?"

_That_ made her laugh. "I think you are quite possibly the only person in the world who has ever asked someone if they had a fallback if being a doctor didn't work out," she said. "Usually people only get asked that if they're going into something that other people see as not lucrative, or not secure. Like art." 

"I seriously doubt that," Finn said. "I'm sure that people have been asked that before... but probably people who maybe aren't as smart as you, or who are squeamish or something. People who think they want to be a doctor for whatever reason, but the other people around them aren't sure that they have what it takes."

"Okay, fair enough," Clarke said. "But that's not what you were thinking of, was it?"

"No," Finn admitted. "I just... I guess it's hard for me to really understand what it's like to be so fully committed to something like that. I mean, you're what, eighteen?"

"Yes."

"Right. Doesn't it seem a little crazy to you that we're supposed to decide what we want to do with the rest of our lives, to make a choice that we're supposed to stick to, or be stuck with, for the next, what? Fifty? Sixty years? Before our brains are even fully formed?"

"Sometimes," Clarke said. "And it's harder for some people than others, if they didn't get exposed to something that really fascinated and excited them when they were young. But it's like... I think it's like anything. Sometimes you just find something, and it just _feels_ right, you know? Deep down, something clicks, and you just know."

"I know exactly what you mean," Finn said, but Clarke could tell from the look in his eyes that he wasn't talking about careers anymore, and it took a great deal of effort to not squirm. What had she just done? 

"I should get to class," she said. 

"I'll walk with you," he replied, standing up when she did and following her to where they returned their trays. She pulled on her coat and felt Finn's hand on her sleeve, ready to guide her? Take her hand? She didn't know. They'd only gone a few steps, though, when they were stopped by someone calling his name.

"Finn!"

He turned, looked, and his face went suddenly pale. His hand dropped away from Clarke's arm. "Raven?"

The crowd parted (not necessarily by choice) for a young woman limping along with a crutch (only one, and no cast, but a brace on her left leg – a situation that she was not completely used to, Clarke gathered, from the way she hadn't quite figured out how to fully coordinate herself) and suddenly the dark-haired girl had her arms around Finn, and then her hands were on his face and she was kissing him, and he was... kissing back? Was he? 

"I've been looking all over for you," she said. "I was starting to worry I would never find you and I would have to go all creepy stalker on you, hacking into your phone's GPS to figure out where you are." She grinned. 

"What... what are you doing here?" Finn asked. "I thought...?"

"Yeah, I thought, too," Raven said. "But I wasn't going to take no for an answer. So I just pushed myself a little harder, made progress faster than they expected, and in the end they had no good reason to force me to stay, so... here I am."

"Here you are," he said. "Raven, this is Clarke. Clarke, Raven."

"Nice to meet you," Raven said, and her smile was warm, her eyes lit from the inside, like... like she'd just been reunited with someone she loved (and not in a friendly or sisterly way), who she hadn't seen in a long time. And who clearly hadn't been expecting to see her. 

"You too," Clarke said. "I've gotta get to class. I'll let you two catch up."

Finn opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but nothing came out, and Clarke was glad that he was temporarily tongue-tied, because anything he said might require a response, and her father had always told her that if she didn't have anything nice to say, not to say anything at all.

She wasn't sure she would ever have anything to say to Finn again.


	20. Lexa

She'd made it through the first day by arriving at class at the last minute, sitting in the back of the room, and escaping as soon as the class was dismissed. She'd gotten her syllabi and gone to the bookstore to get her books (and was thankful that she wasn't in any of the sciences, because holy shit were those books expensive, although really, was it absolutely critical that they had the latest edition of everything? Did that much change between one edition and the next?) and then she'd gone home. She hadn't waited for Anya at the end of the day; she'd just walked, texting her roommate (friend? they were friends, right? Lexa couldn't quite remember what it felt like to have friends, if she'd ever really known) to let her know that she would see her there, because she didn't want Anya to worry. 

Which probably meant they were friends, because if they were just roommates would she bother? 

'Okay,' Anya had texted back, but somehow Lexa was able to read a lot more into those four letters than she might in entire paragraphs from other people. Okay meant 'Sure, I'm fine with that,' and 'I'll see you later,' and 'Please be there when I get back,' and 'Please don't do anything that you'll regret', and 'I don't care if you like it or not, I worry about you, and I'm not going to stop worrying until I see that you're okay.'

Which was a lot to get from a text message. But it wasn't just the text message. It was the seven months leading up to the text message, and the three – almost four – weeks since Christmas. 

So she sent another text, to maybe reassure her... or maybe to reassure herself. 

**LEXA:** I'll start dinner.

**ANYA:** There's chicken thawed in the fridge.

Which really meant 'thank you', and not for making dinner.

They had made small talk over the meal, but whatever had happened between them the night before, whatever tension existed, seemed to have lessened (if not disappeared – it might be a long time before it disappeared) with Lexa's continued presence, so there was no real need for conversation. 

Finally Lexa had gotten up to retreat to her room, and Anya had looked up from the article she was reading. "Do you want a ride tomorrow?"

"Okay," Lexa said, but what she was really saying was 'I'm trying here. I know it doesn't look like it, but I swear I'm trying. I'm not giving up... not completely... and thank you for not giving up on me, and please don't.'

"Okay. Are we running tomorrow?"

"I was planning to."

"Wake me up if I'm not up."

Lexa nodded, and went into her room. She wasn't tired, but she was exhausted. She wondered if she would sleep that night. 

Morning came too soon, and too cold, but they went out anyway, and came back and showered and grabbed breakfast, and Lexa got into the car without any kind of argument or complaint, and Anya hadn't reached out physically but it was there in her eyes when she looked over – 'I'm here if you need me' – even if what she said was, "Ready to go?"

Lexa nodded, and Anya backed out of the driveway. The trip was too short, and Lexa found herself wishing that they could just keep going, thought maybe she should suggest a road trip. Maybe for spring break, but that seemed like an eternity from now. Maybe this weekend, then. Just a short one. 

"See you later," Anya said. 

"What time are you done?" Lexa asked.

"Should be three. You?"

"Same."

"Meet you back here, then?"

Lexa nodded, and they went their separate ways. 

Another class, another syllabus, and then her second class and another trip to the bookstore. If she'd been smart, she would have waited and done it all at once, but what was done was done. It didn't matter. She had time to kill anyway, because once the syllabus had been handed out and briefly discussed, her professor had let them out, finding no point in keeping them there before they'd had a chance to do any of the reading. 

"Oh my god!"

Lexa looked up from the shelf where she'd been trying to figure out if they were actually out of one of the book she needed, or if it had just gotten moved to somewhere else for some reason, which could happen if it was being used by more than one class. 

Shit.

Lacey, or Lucy, or something like that that started with an L and was definitely not Lexi because 'oh-em-gee how weird would _that_ be?'. She was – had been – one of _her_ friends, so Lexa had known her – tangentially – and if memory served, couldn't stand her.

"Oh my god, how _are_ you?" she asked, coming over to Lexa looking like she had every intention of throwing her arms around her, like personal space didn't exist. Which, she'd discovered, for some people it really didn't.

She wasn't one of those people. She sidestepped to avoid being touched, and said, "I'm fine," in a tone that she hoped would convince Lacey – definitely Lacey, Lucy was someone else – that the conversation was over, or didn't need to be had in the first place.

"I feel like it's been _ages_ ," she said. "You just _disappeared_."

_We're not friends,_ Lexa wanted to say. _We lived in the same hallway for a few months. We went on a camping trip together once, and you complained about everything the entire time. We are not friends. Don't pretend that we are._

"I did a semester abroad," she said. 

"Oh! I thought—well, after what happened... I _heard_ , you know? Everyone heard, and we were just _devastated_ but, but not nearly as devastated as you must have been, right? I just can't even imagine what it must be like, to go through that, to... I thought maybe you'd decided to take a semester off, to, like, work through it?"

"I went to Australia."

"Oh wow," Lacey said. "Wow, that must have been... but you were okay? I mean, you're okay now? I just can't even—"

"Imagine. You said that," Lexa interrupted. "That's good. I'm glad. I'm glad you can't imagine, and I hope you never have to live it. Okay?"

Lacey blinked at her, and she knew that this wasn't what she was supposed to be saying, that she had veered off the script that Lacey had already written in her head of how this was going to go, but the thing was, she wasn't an actor in Lacey's movie. She didn't give a shit about Lacey's movie. She was stuck in her own (it was almost certainly a horror film) and she wasn't going to ruin it with cliché Lifetime movie dialogue.

"I just... if you ever want to _talk_ or—"

"There are professionals for that," Lexa said. "Believe me. I've heard all about it." Part of her got a kind of perverse pleasure out of watching Lacey flounder as she blatantly refused to be drawn into the scene. 

"I meant... with someone else who, y'know, knew her? You know that I – we – we're always here for you," Lacey said, but she was stumbling over the words, starting the sentences like she was afraid to finish them because she didn't know what Lexa was going to say in response. 

"Right," Lexa said. She didn't even know who 'we' was. Lacey and her group of friends, who had always monopolized the lounge so no one else could use it at any kind of reasonable hour? Maybe she meant the LGBT+ group that they'd gone to a few times, and that _she_ had kept up with more than Lexa had, because she didn't like putting herself into boxes, and didn't feel the same need to connect to some kind of group that most people did. But Lacey had been part of that, too, and part of the reason that Lexa had stopped going, because she couldn't stand the drama, and with her it was all drama, all the time. 

'I just can't help it,' had been her excuse, 'I'm a _theatre_ major.' And you could hear when she said it that she spelled it with an 're' instead of an 'er'. 

_A word of advice,_ Lexa thought. _Don't go into improv. You suck at it._

"I, uh, I guess I should get going," Lacey said. "I just wanted to say hi, and see how you were doing. Maybe we can get together and, like, catch up."

"No," Lexa said. "I don't think so."

Lacey blinked, and nodded, and then she just walked away, and Lexa watched the very small, thin, rickety bridge that Lacey had attempted to build burn, and she smiled a little on the inside, because she'd gotten through it, and because she wouldn't have to go through it again, or at least not with her. And maybe she would go back to her friends, her gang, her clique, whatever you wanted to call it, and tell them all how rude she had been (and she wouldn't try to pretend, even to herself, that she hadn't been, but as far as she was concerned, Lacey had been equally rude in trying to confront her and get some kind of reaction out of her, some kind of emotional response that she wasn't owed) and the rest of the world would leave her alone, too.

She found the book she was looking for, and went up the register, and cringed again as she handed over her father's credit card, because that's what it was for, and took the bag. She wished that she had a key to Anya's car, or at least one of those little fobs that would let her unlock the doors even if she couldn't actually start the car, because being inside the car would still be warmer than standing outside waiting, even without the heat on.

"Sorry I'm late," Anya said. "I got stuck talking to someone that I really wished would shut up, and no matter how many times I said I had to go..." She rolled her eyes, then unlocked the doors and got in.

"Must be the day for that," Lexa said. 

Anya looked over at her, searching her face. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"Real fine, or 'Shut up, Anya, I don't want to talk,' fine?"

She laughed, or at least air came out of her lungs in a burst that might have been a laugh if there had been any sound to accompany it. "I don't know," she said. "Can I get back to you on that?"

Anya grinned. "Absolutely."


	21. Clarke

**FINN:** I can explain. Meet me for lunch?

Clarke glared at her phone and shoved it in her pocket, trying to ignore it as it kept buzzing, and finally getting fed up after the third time it made her jump, because her professor actually noticed this time and the last thing she needed was for someone to get on her case right now. So she reached into her pocket and switched it off completely, not turning it on until after class.

**FINN:** It's not what it looks like.

**FINN:** Please, Clarke.

**FINN:** Lunch? Dining hall?

**FINN:** Come on, Clarke. Answer me.

She didn't answer. She went to the library because she had time to kill between classes, but not enough that she wanted to risk going back to her dorm. Octavia might be there, and she knew that her roommate (and best friend, which might be more to the point) would be able to see through whatever fake smile she tried to paste on and want to know what was going on, and she wasn't ready to get into it.

Maybe he wasn't lying. Maybe there _was_ some reasonable explanation for what she'd seen. Maybe they were just friends. Really, really close friends. Who kissed. On the mouth. Like someone who'd just found water in the desert or a starving man handed a cake or whatever other clichés existed in that vein. Maybe she owed him at least the chance to try to make it make sense. 

Did she, though? Did she owe him anything?

He _had_ given her a place to stay on Christmas, so yeah, she probably did owe him at least that.

She sat down at a little table in the corner, getting out her books and starting in on the homework assignment. Might as well get ahead while it was still early in the semester and she was still motivated to try to keep up on things. She always started out with the best of intentions. She was going to read every word of every reading assignment, she was going to make outlines and get papers started early, she was going to prioritize work over play... but a few weeks in and she was skimming assignments, and starting to push off starting that paper until tomorrow, then the next day, then 'I'll do it this weekend' and then it's Sunday night and it's not due until Tuesday but she never did get that book from the library, did she? so she's scrambling to find one last source to cite. 

Not always, and not with all classes, but often enough. She blamed Octavia. Without her, she doubted she would be half as social as she was. It was a mixed blessing, having such a bad influence in her life.

She was glad that the stream of texts from Finn had stopped, but she couldn't help looking at her phone every few minutes. She told herself that it was because she was just worried that she would get caught up and not notice it was time to head to her next class, but she knew that she was lying, because she had a timer set to alert her fifteen minutes before, which was enough time to get from pretty much anywhere she was likely to go on campus to the building where the class was held and still be on time.

So what was she looking for?

An explanation. That's what. She kept hoping (as she checked her email again) that since she wasn't responding to his messages asking to meet, that he would decide to just provide the explanation in text. It would even make sense, wouldn't it? It would give her time to process it, to have a little distance from it when they finally did sit down to have a conversation.

When. Not if. 

But it might be if. Depending on what he said.

She scrubbed at her face with her hands. It was useless. There was no way she was going to get anything read with her thoughts chasing their tails around her head. She should just text him back, agree to meet him... but not at the dining hall. Was he crazy? Although actually, maybe that was the opposite of crazy. Maybe it was the smartest thing he'd ever done, asking to meet somewhere where they would be surrounded by people – witnesses – in case she decided to lose it on him. The whole social pressure to not create a scene thing.

Was he clever enough to think of that? 

Maybe. 

She picked up her phone, tabbed on the icon to bring up the string of messages from him, and just stared at the screen. All she had to type was 'yes', or 'okay' or some sort of acquiescence. All she had to do was agree, and then show up, and it would all make sense. He would make it all make sense.

Right? 

He had to.

Or she was even more of an idiot than he was, because he'd thought he could get away with it... and she'd let him. But she didn't have to continue to let him. She could just delete the texts, delete all future texts, and just cut her losses. 

It would be the smart thing to do, and she'd always been a smart girl, hadn't she? She'd never let herself get too hung up on anyone, because it would just interfere with her plans for the future. In high school, she just thought about college, because high school relationships never lasted... or maybe not never, but almost never. College... people stayed with people that they met in college. Sometimes, anyway. 

Not that she was really looking for that. Not that it should even be a thought in her head, really. It was just...

Hell, she didn't know.

She packed up her stuff and headed down the stairs, because clearly this wasn't working. Maybe she would go grab a bagel or a muffin or something, since she'd barely touched her breakfast.

She was just stepping out of the building's lobby when someone called her name. Not a voice she recognized, but she turned anyway. After all, it was pretty unlikely that they were calling out to some _other_ Clarke, right? 

And there, for the second time that day, was the girl with the crutch and the leg brace, hobbling toward her. (Okay, the first time that day that she was hobbling toward _her_ , but it was still some pretty serious déjà vu. She was fairly confident that this time what happened when she closed the distance would be different, though. Because that would be awkward.)

The thought actually made her smile a little, and Raven must have thought the smile was directed at her, because she smiled back. "Hey," she said. "Sorry, I didn't—you're not on your way somewhere, are you? I'm not keeping you from getting where you need to be?"

"No," Clarke said, the word coming out automatically, even though this would have been a good opportunity to lie and make a hasty exit. "I'm just killing time."

"Okay. I just... I saw you and I figured you were the closest thing to a familiar face I have right now, so I thought I would take my chances. Even though we only met for a split-second." She smiled again, her brown eyes warm. She held out her hand. "Hi. I'm Raven."

"Clarke," she replied, taking her hand and shaking it. "Nice to meet you." 

"You too. You're a friend of Finn's?"

"Yeah. More... I'm more a friend of one of his frat brothers," Clarke said. "The older brother of my roommate."

"Ah, gotcha. Yeah, that was weird when he told me that he was pledging a fraternity. It didn't really seem like his thing. But I guess he must get something out of it."

"They're mostly good guys," Clarke said. "Some of them – the frats, I mean – are pretty awful, just all about drinking and partying and getting themselves into trouble, but not quite enough trouble to get them shut down, but some of them are more focused on academics, or service, that kind of thing. They kind of fall somewhere in the middle." She shrugged.

"I can see that," Raven said. "People like to have a place where they can feel like they belong. Speaking of which – well, okay, not really speaking of which, but speaking of places, and needing to get to them – can you maybe point me in the right direction? I need to find where they issue student IDs."

"Oh." Clarke bit the inside of her lip. "You're a student here."

"I just transferred. Things are still kind of a mess, but I just got everything sorted out with the financial aid office, which was the biggest thing, so now I need to get my ID and then I can finalize my registration for classes, and I'll be all set."

"Classes started a few days ago."

"I know." Raven rolled her eyes. "Like I said, things are kind of a mess. So do you know where I'm supposed to go?"

"Yeah, you just—" Clarke started, then realized that it was going to be a pain in the ass to explain, and probably even worse for Raven to remember. "Why don't I just take you?"

"You don't mind?"

"Not at all." _Nice, Griffin. You must be some kind of masochist._

"That would be awesome. Thanks."

Clarke had to slow her pace a little to make sure that Raven could keep up. When she realized she'd gotten a few steps ahead, she paused, looking back. Raven grimaced, looking apologetic. "Sorry. It's... some days are better than others, and unfortunately this is one of those days where it's worse. I can get around without the crutch most of the time, but my balance is a little... what's the word that one of my physical therapists used?... wonky." She grinned. "So when I know I'm going to be having to deal with situations where I might get knocked into, I keep it with me. And hey, if anyone ever tries to start something, I can just hit them with it, right?"

"Right," Clarke agreed, and she couldn't help grinning back. She wanted to hate Raven, because obviously that's what she was supposed to do, unless and until proven otherwise, but she was making it very difficult. And who made those rules, anyway? 

Men, probably. Or media. Which was run by men, so amounted to the same thing.

"Do you... can I ask what happened?" Clarke asked.

Raven's smile stiffened. "It's a long story. Maybe another time."

"Sure," Clarke said. "Of course." The rest of the walk was made in silence, and she wished she hadn't said anything because she hadn't wanted to make things awkward between them, or at least not any more awkward than they already were. (And that was entirely one-sided, because as far as she could tell Raven had no idea there was any reason for them to be anything but friends, or at least people with a mutual friend.)

"Here it is," she said. "And I should get to class. But where you need to go to do your registration in person is right upstairs anyway, so you should be okay."

"Yeah. Thanks." Raven smiled at her again, and if it was a little more cautious than before, it was still genuine enough.

Maybe, Clarke decided, Finn owed them _both_ an explanation.


	22. Lexa

Anya nudged her arm. "Are you coming in, or are you just going to sit here? Because class starts in ten minutes and we still need to change and stretch."

"You can go in without me," Lexa said. "Don't let me stop you."

"No," Anya said. "If I go in without you, you might not go in. Hell, you might steal my car."

"Wouldn't you take your keys?" Lexa asked, one eyebrow going up.

"I wouldn't put it past you to know how to hotwire a car," Anya said. 

"Because I'm such a criminal."

"No. Because when faced with a difficult situation, you will always find a way to make it work for you," Anya said. "You're practical, and you're smart, and I'm pretty sure it's not rocket science." She smiled. "Come inside anyway."

Lexa suppressed a sigh and nodded, pushing open the passenger's side door and getting out, heading automatically to the trunk to retrieve her bag with all of her gear. She didn't know why she was so hesitant to return to the dojang; for a lot of her life training had been pretty much the only constant, and even when she was brand new, walking in the door to face a bunch of strangers, she always had a pretty good idea of what was expected of her. The details might change, but the basics stayed the same. Even when she was in a new country and barely spoke the language, she could just watch the people around her for a few seconds and know what was being asked. And Korean commands were Korean commands, regardless of the language that they were sandwiched into.

Some schools were better than others, but this one was a good one. It was surprisingly small for a school in a college town, but then most people started training when they were young, and those who trained as adults were often the parents of the kids. It was fairly rare that an adult would walk in off the street and stick around for very long, and rarer still that a college kid would. Their lives were fairly transient by nature, and it just made things hard.

She followed Anya up the set of steps from the parking lot to the building, and walked in after her, carefully maneuvering to keep from knocking the children who were coming off the mats (most of them forgetting to bow, she noticed with a flare of irritation) in the heads. "Just wade through," Anya said. 

Lexa noticed that many of the kids were looking at her with curiosity, and Anya with more than a little awe, and some of them might remember her but judging by the colors of their belts, a lot of them might not. It didn't matter to her, though. They weren't her responsibility, or her problem. 

She was glad for the relative quiet of the small locker room, and kept her head down as she changed into her dobok, shoving her street clothes and shoes into the locker next to Anya's. She waited for her to finish changing, then pushed open the door wide enough to slip out before heading onto the mats with a quick bow.

Lincoln was there, already stretching, but he bounced up when he saw her. "Hey! Welcome back!"

"Thanks," Lexa said. "Can we... not?"

"Of course," Lincoln said. "But you know that people are going to be happy to see you."

"Is there anyone who even remembers me?"

He rolled his eyes a little. "You weren't gone _that_ long," he said. "They'll remember you."

_Seven months,_ she thought, but she didn't say it. _It's been seven months._

"There aren't that many new people," Anya said. "Most of the people who train regularly are the same ones that did last year."

"There was an influx of people at the start of the school year, like there always is, but most of them got their new belts right before Christmas and haven't been back."

"If they even made it that far," Anya said. 

Lexa knew that she was an exception to the rule, but it was different when you walked into a school already having rank. She had gotten her second dan last year (which some of the people who had been training at the school for a lot longer than she had were annoyed about, but she'd proven she knew her stuff, and the instructor had seen no reason to try and hold her back just because _he_ wasn't the one who had taught her) so wouldn't be testing for anything for quite a while. Which sometimes made it hard for her to motivate herself to really get up and go, but mostly at this point it was a relief. She didn't have any pressure to remember everything all at once. And if she forgot things, she hoped that everyone would just chalk it up to her semester away and leave it at that.

Others arrived, and those who had been there long enough welcomed her back, but no one made a big fuss, which was nice. Maybe Anya had told them not to, or maybe she'd just mentioned that she might be coming back, or maybe she had just been making excuses for her all along. Whatever the case, she as glad when they were told to line up, and she took her place standing behind Anya and in front of Lincoln.

After that, she just let herself get lost in it, in familiar motions, stretches, exercises, drills. She let herself forget everything but exactly what she was doing in the moment, and was surprised (and grateful) when she discovered that seven months of not training hadn't left her completely out of shape. She would probably be sore in the morning, but not to the point of not wanting to move. (Running and surfing had probably helped, but the activities didn't all work the same sets of muscles.) 

By the end of class she was sweaty and drained, but she felt good. Better than she had in a long time, and almost like herself again. This hadn't been something she'd ever shared with _her_... or, that wasn't quite right, because it made it sound like she'd kept it from her, and she hadn't. But _she_ hadn't had any interest in participating, and had even been squeamish about coming to watch Lexa test, because she didn't like the idea of violence, even when it was just a sport, more of a game than anything.

Would things have been different if Lexa had insisted that she at least take a basic self-defense class? Would it have ended in some other way? She could have convinced her somehow, and she should have. It might not have helped, but it might have made all the difference in the world, and there was no way to know now but...

Anya's hand landed on her shoulder, anchoring her in the here and now before she could completely spin out, and Lexa wondered if she'd been able to tell somehow, or if it was just coincidence. She squeezed it briefly, then nudged her toward the locker room. 

"Glad you came?" she asked as they changed back into their street clothes (which had always seemed a little gross to Lexa, putting clothes onto her sweaty body like that, but she'd been wearing them all day anyway and they were going straight into the wash after). 

"Yes," Lexa said. 

"Good."

It took a little longer than it might otherwise have, because of course now that class was over, people wanted to talk to her, ask her how she was, ask her where she'd been (if they didn't know) or how Australia was (if they did, or once they found out) and she was pretty sure it would have taken longer if their instructor hadn't decided it was time for everyone to leave and started herding them out the door.

"You're worse than the kids," he said to them good-naturedly. "You think that once class is over, this place turns into a coffee shop."

"That's actually a good idea," one of the women – Amy – said. "Do you want to go out for coffee?"

Lexa froze. "Not tonight," she said, after a hesitation that was slightly too long. "I still have reading to do for class tomorrow."

"Of course," Amy said, smiling. "Another time then."

"Yeah," Lexa said, in what she hoped was a noncommittal tone, because she wasn't actually agreeing to anything. She would do it if she had to, if Anya made her or if it just became too awkward to keep refusing invitations, but hopefully school would continue to provide a good excuse to get her out of actually having to pretend like she was still capable of social interaction.

They dumped their bags into the trunk and got into the car. Lexa fastened her seatbelt, and noticed only then that she was shaking. Maybe class had taken more out of her than she realized. Or maybe it was the fact that Anya had gotten home late and hadn't had time to cook, and Lexa had forgotten dinner. 

"You okay?" Anya asked. 

Lexa shrugged. 

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only answer I have."

She sighed. "Let's go home. There's some leftover pie, I think."

"No," Lexa said. "I ate it for breakfast."

"You ate pie for breakfast?"

"It has fruit in it. It's nutritious."

"That's not..." Anya shook her head. "What about lunch?" Lexa didn't answer, because she didn't have one. "Dinner?" Lexa shrugged again. "So all day, all you've eaten is pie."

"I guess so."

"Damn it," Anya muttered. "Lexa, you have to take care of yourself. I will do everything that I can for you, but I can't be with you all the time to make sure that you're doing basic things like eating. And I'm pretty sure that we already covered the fact somewhere along the line that you don't want me to be. I thought we were past this."

"I forgot."

"How did you forget? Doesn't your stomach remind you?"

"Not really," Lexa admitted. "At least not when it was convenient, and then when I had access to food, I wasn't hungry anymore."

"We're going to get something to eat. Now."

"I'm not—"

The look Anya shot her was enough to stop her protest. "We're getting food, and you're eating it. Otherwise I'm going to start thinking that on top of everything else, you have some kind of eating disorder."

"I'm not starving myself," Lexa said. 

"Consciously," Anya said. "You need to get your shit together. Understand?"

Lexa understood. She just wasn't actually sure that it was possible.


	23. Clarke

**FINN:** Meet me for dinner?  
 **FINN:** Please, Clarke. I'm begging you. Give me a chance.  
 **FINN:** Can we please just talk?  
 **FINN:** If you decide afterward that you want to hate me, fine, but just give me a chance. That's all I'm asking.  
 **FINN:** You can't just ignore me, Clarke.

For a split second, Clarke seriously considered throwing her phone at the wall, or out the window, or something. Maybe flushing it down the toilet? That would probably be the most appropriate, given the circumstances. After all, Finn was a piece of shit.

But she knew she would regret it, and he definitely wasn't worth the cost of replacing the phone, so instead she deleted the texts and sent one to Octavia instead. 

**CLARKE:** Where are you?

Her phone buzzed a second later. 

**OCTAVIA:** Being a creepy stalker. Why?

That was _not_ what Clarke had expected for a response, but then this was Octavia she was talking about, and when did she ever do what people expected? 

**CLARKE:** Who are you stalking?

**OCTAVIA:** That guy from the other night. I saw him, and I didn't MEAN to start following him. It just kind of happened.

**CLARKE:** Where ARE you?

**OCTAVIA:** Outside some martial arts school, I guess? Figures he does karate or whatever. 

**CLARKE:** Oh, the guy who saved you?

**OCTAVIA:** Duh. What guy from the other night did you think I was talking about? Seriously, Griffin, what kind of a girl do you think I am?

**CLARKE:** I don't know anymore, considering that you've decided that stalking basically complete strangers is okay.

**OCTAVIA:** lol Okay, point taken. I guess I should leave before someone notices me. Like, y'know, him.

**CLARKE:** You don't want him to notice you?

**OCTAVIA:** Not being a stalker! But at least now I know that he wasn't just in the city for the night.

**CLARKE:** Do you want to meet me for dinner?

**OCTAVIA:** Dining hall?

**CLARKE:** Can you afford somewhere else?

**OCTAVIA:** Ugh, fine.

**CLARKE:** See you there.

She grabbed her bag with a few textbooks in it to take with her, just in case she had to wait a while for Octavia. She had never noticed any kind of martial arts school (dojo? Was that the word?) in the area, so she wasn't sure where exactly she was or how long it would take to get back from there, but it couldn't have been too far if she'd walked, right? Still, might as well attempt to do the reading she'd failed at earlier while she had the chance.

She staked out a table when she arrived, but waited to get food until Octavia got there, which was only a few minutes later. She dumped her bag in the seat opposite Clarke's and tipped her head in the direction of the food lines. "Let's go, before all of the good stuff is gone."

"You have an interesting definition of good," Clarke said.

"Beggars can't be choosers, as my mom always used to say. Along with, 'This kitchen serves two things: take it, or leave it. It's up to you.'"

"What does that even mean?" Clarke asked.

"It means that you either ate what was put in front of you, or you didn't eat," Octavia said. "Although usually she would have pity later and let you have a bowl of cereal or a peanut butter sandwich. But I'm pretty sure that was just so she didn't have to worry about us going in to school complaining that our mother didn't feed us."

"I guess," Clarke said. She'd never been a very picky eater, and had generally been happy to eat what she was given, but then her father had usually tried to make things that he knew she would like, or at least have most of the meal be things he knew she would eat, and then he would cajole her into trying whatever unfamiliar thing he'd decided to throw in, with mixed results. There was nothing anyone could ever do to convince her that turnips were food. Ever.

They got their food and sat down again. Clarke glanced at her phone and deleted three messages without reading them. They were all from Finn. She knew she should probably block him, but that seemed a little extreme. 

"Speaking of stalkers," Octavia said, nodding toward her phone. "What's that about?"

Clarke sighed. Maybe she should have laid out the money to have something delivered, just so they could avoid having this conversation in public. But with her relationship with her mother still pretty tenuous (sitting down to a meal with her and Octavia had been... interesting...) she was afraid that if she took too big of a step out of line, she might be cut off from the allowance she was given every month. Better to hoard what she had, just in case it was all she got for the rest of the year.

"Finn," she said. 

"Troubles in—" Octavia started, but stopped as soon as she saw how not-funny Clarke looked. "What's going on?"

"He has a girlfriend," Clarke said. "Or... he has a girl who kisses him and acts like she's his girlfriend, who showed up sort of out of the blue today and will apparently be going to school here. If she's _not_ his girlfriend, then apparently she didn't get the memo telling her."

"Oh. Wow. Ouch," Octavia said. "That sucks."

"I guess," Clarke said, shrugging and trying to pretend that it didn't suck, that it didn't even matter. After all, she still hadn't really figured out what they were, if they were anything, or what he was to her except the guy that she'd slept with because it seemed like a good idea at the time. "He wants to talk. He wants to explain."

"So talk to him," Octavia said, as if it was the simplest thing on earth. 

"Why should I?" Clarke countered. "He's clearly a cheating asshole."

"Or his ex is delusional," Octavia said. "Or just trying to fuck up his chances with someone new."

"He kissed her back," Clarke said. "I'm pretty sure he kissed her back."

"Maybe it was habit," Octavia replied. "Someone kisses you, you kiss them back."

Clarke raised her eyebrows. "Is that how it works?"

"With someone that you used to love? Sure. Maybe."

"Maybe."

"Look – what is it going to hurt to talk to him?" Octavia asked. 

"My pride."

She rolled her eyes. "You and your damned pride, Griffin. Suck it up. If, after he's had his chance to explain, you still think that he's a cheating asshole and you never want to see him again, then fine, that's your decision. But if you like him at all, you should give him a chance. Maybe it's the girl who's the asshole."

"She's nice, actually," Clarke said. "I was leaving the library and she as looking for where to get her student ID, and we talked a little, and she's actually really kind of nice."

"Or a good actress."

"But it's not like we were holding hands or doing anything that would make it look like we were together," Clarke pointed out. "We were just walking next to each other, and there are plenty of guys and girls who do that without it meaning anything. So she had no reason to do something that might screw up his chances with me."

"Some girls are like that," Octavia said with a shrug. "They see their man – or the man they think is their man, or the man that used to be their man but isn't anymore – with another girl, and they immediately assume that she's a threat and start pissing on him to mark him as their territory."

"She doesn't seem like that kind of girl," Clarke said. "She seemed like... she was just acting like it was the most natural thing in the world, like why _wouldn't_ she kiss him? But it felt like he had no idea that she was coming. Like she transferred to his school without telling him."

"And I thought _I_ was a creepy stalker," Octavia said, only half joking. 

"So what should I do?" Clarke asked. 

"I already told you. Talk to him. See what he has to say for himself. Maybe somehow there's a logical explanation. Or maybe a slightly illogical explanation, but an explanation. You don't ever have to talk to him again if you decide that he's full of shit."

"I guess you're right," Clarke said. "I just... I'm allowed to be pissed about this, right? I'm allowed to be really, really angry at him that he was giving me all of the signs that he wanted to be with me as more than just friends, or friends with benefits, and now a girl shows up who really seems to think that she's his more-than-friend-with-benefits. Unless I was imagining it? Not the girl – I am pretty confident that she is very real, but the fact that he seemed interested?"

"You definitely weren't imagining that," Octavia said. "I've been telling you for a while now that he's interested in you. So... talk to him. It's the only way you're going to get any kind of resolution here. And then come back and tell me all about it."

"Now?" Clarke asked. "You think that I should go _now_?"

"It would make sense," Octavia said, "considering that he's standing right there?"

Clarke looked where Octavia was pointing, and sure enough, there was Finn, standing just outside the dining hall because he couldn't get in without paying. He waved when he saw her looking, and smiled a little, and beckoned for her to come out.

"This is such a bad idea," she said.

"Do you have a better one?" Octavia asked.

"No."

"You'll be fine," Octavia said. "Don't let him get under your skin. Unless of course you _want_ \--"

"You never stop, do you?" Clarke asked.

"Nope. Just ask Bellamy."

"I don't know how long I'll be," Clarke said.

"If I leave I'll text you where I'm going," Octavia said. "Probably just back to the room."

"Okay. Wish me luck."

"You don't need luck," Octavia said. "You've got this."

"Can you just wish me luck anyway?"

"Good luck. I'll see you soon."

Clarke got up, her plate still half full, and left the dining hall to go find out if her almost kind of maybe pseudo boyfriend was a lying cheating asshole after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a rough week. To say the least. I have been heartbroken, angry, disappointed, betrayed. I suspect many of you reading this have as well. So there are two things I want to say:
> 
> 1\. That will not happen in this story. I know this is a slow, slow, _slow_ burn. I know people are probably starting to get a little impatient, waiting for them to meet. It's coming. Soon. Chapter 28, to be exact. From there, it definitely continues to be a slow build, but they will get there. I _promise_. I do not know how the story ends yet, because I'm not done writing it, but they will both live to see the end of it. 
> 
> 2\. If you are hurting, and you need someone to listen, someone to vent to, a virtual shoulder to cry on - I'm here. I am ironicsnowflake on Tumblr and Twitter, and my email is eternaleponine [at] gmail [dot] com. I will listen. None of us need to go through this alone.


	24. Lexa

She'd forgotten. 

Somehow, she'd forgotten.

A glance at the calendar and realization had slammed into her like a fist to the gut, and she'd actually had to grab hold of the back of her desk chair to stay upright, and then gave up and just didn't, letting herself sink to the floor, because what was the point?

She'd forgotten.

She shouldn't be allowed to forget.

It had never made sense. They'd joked about it – or mostly _she_ had joked, and Lexa had smiled in response – about how it didn't make sense that Lexa had been born in the summer, and _she_ had been born in the winter, when if you were going to going to give seasons personalities, they were the exactly opposite.

"Not that you're cold," she'd said. "That's not what I mean."

"I can be cold," Lexa had replied. "You don't have to try to sugar-coat it for me. I can be cold. I can be a heartless bitch." She'd shrugged, like it didn't matter. Because it didn't matter. She cared about those she cared about, and she would do anything for them. The rest of the world was on its own. 

"Not to me," she'd said, taking Lexa's hand, pressing her lips to the back of it. 

"No," Lexa had said. "Not to you."

But then she'd forgotten. And she had nothing, no one to blame it on but herself. Classes were just classes, and Tae Kwon Do was just Tae Kwon Do. She didn't have to worry about food because Anya made sure that she ate, and she didn't even have a job, although she knew she ought to look for one. (It would fill the time, if nothing else.) 

She heard Anya shuffling down the hall, stopping at her door, and then her knuckles rapping against it. "You awake?"

_Don't answer,_ Lexa told herself. _Just don't answer and she'll think you're asleep._

And a minute later Anya kept shuffling, maybe giving up on the idea of a morning run, or maybe going to get a glass of water or put the kettle on for tea or something, and she would be back. It didn't matter. Lexa would just ignore her, and eventually she would go away. 

Probably.

She hoped.

Because she didn't want to go running. She wasn't sure, now that she was on the floor, that she would be able to get her legs under herself again. She felt like she'd gone numb around the ache in her gut, and was that normal and what did it mean? It was like it was impossible for her to feel anything emotionally, so it all just manifested physically, and now she was down, actually down, and the effort of picking herself back up was more than she could manage.

A few minutes later, another knock at the door. "Lexa?"

Had she locked her door? She looked over, but she couldn't tell. She didn't usually; it wasn't a habit she'd fallen into mostly because her father had never let her lock her door. (She wasn't sure what the consequences would have been if she had; she'd never tried.) So probably not, which meant if Anya wanted to she could just come in. But she wouldn't. She had more respect for Lexa and her space than that... didn't she?

"Lexa, if we're going to go, we should go," Anya said. 

"I'm not going," Lexa said, except a second later she wasn't sure if she'd said it or if she'd just thought it, and was she losing it? Was this what losing your mind felt like? She tried again. "I'm not going." But she still wasn't sure.

A pause, and the sound of Anya leaning against the door like she was pressing her ear to it, trying harder to hear. "Everything okay?"

_No._ This time she knew that nothing had come out of her mouth. She slumped against the foot of her bed and focused on just breathing in and out, on feeling the air entering her lungs and leaving it, on her heart thumping inside her chest, reminding her that she was alive. 

"Can I come in?"

_No._

A pause. A long one. She just had to say the word, one word, and Anya would go away. 

Probably.

She hoped.

"Lexa, I'm coming in," Anya said, and a second later the door cracked open. Lexa saw her look toward the bed first, and not finding her there, her forehead furrowed for a second before she saw her on the floor. She was at her side in a second, one hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Lexa moved her head, but it wasn't any sort of movement that would equate to a yes or a no, just a sort of weird circular bobbing motion that meant nothing but that she was scared, she was so damn scared, because she was trapped in her head and in her body, and they weren't working together and they weren't working right, and she was probably losing it and no matter how much she wanted to say something, she couldn't, because her words were trapped in her throat, choking her.

"Are you hurt?" Anya asked, her hands coming up to brace Lexa's head, to stop her head from wobbling. She managed to put pressure against Anya's palms, side to side. No. "Okay. Did you trip?" No. "What's... do you want me to help you up?"

Did she?

She closed her eyes. Opened them again. Yes.

Anya leaned in, rested her forehead against Lexa's for a second, and when she offered Lexa her hands, and then gripped her arms when she didn't quite take them, Lexa could feel that she was shaking. _Don't be scared,_ she wanted to say, but still, there were no words, so she just leaned against her once she was upright, and felt Anya's arms tighten around her.

It was easier to breathe like this. It was easier to breathe with someone else's breath to match, someone else's strength to lean on.

But she shouldn't. She shouldn't be allowed. Not with how things had ended. Not with what she'd done, or hadn't done. She didn't deserve to be cared for. She didn't deserve to be allowed to fall apart, even a little bit. 

Anya shifted her over toward the bed, sitting her on the edge of it and crouching in front of her. "You need to tell me what's going on," she said. "I can't help you if I don't know what's wrong."

Lexa closed her eyes, kept them closed for much longer than it took the blink, and then opened them again, lifted her hand, pointed to the calendar that hung there, the one of nature scenes that Anya had gotten free for donating to somewhere or other and had hung up in here for her, even though who kept a paper calendar anymore? They all lived on their phones.

Which would actually be more useful, because there wasn't actually anything _on_ the calendar, nothing to really point to to tell Anya why she was falling apart. So she pointed to her phone instead, and Anya picked it up, and Lexa tapped on the screen, bringing up the calendar and turning it so Anya could see.

"Oh," she said. "Oh, Lexa. I'm sorry."

_Why? Why are you sorry? You didn't know _her_. _She_ wasn't yours._

But sympathy. Empathy. And Anya _had_ known _her_. She'd known both of them, had supported them, been their friend. Together, and apart... although apart maybe a little more Lexa's friend that _hers_ , and Lexa had needed that, because she didn't make friends easily, and she was shit at keeping them because she'd never really tried to before, and Anya had been there for her even when Lexa gave her every reason not to want to be, hadn't budged no matter how hard Lexa had tried to push her away.

_She_ hadn't been Anya's in the same way that she had been Lexa's, but to say – think – that Anya couldn't understand... it was disingenuous at best.

"What can I do?"

Lexa shook her head. She didn't know.

"Do you... I have to go to class. You should, too. It won't help to just sit around and think about it." She pushed back a strand of Lexa's hair. "You don't have to say anything. Tell your professors – write it down – that you have laryngitis if they ask, if you don't feel like talking. But you should be there."

What Anya was really saying while not saying it was that she didn't want to leave Lexa here alone. That she wanted her surrounded by people because if she was left to her own devices she might do something stupid, that she would regret... or that would make Anya regret leaving her. 

But she wouldn't. Not now, not today... not when her only friend left in the world (and maybe the only friend she'd ever really had, except _her_ ) would blame herself if she did. She couldn't do that to her. 

So she agreed to go (because the truth was she wasn't sure that she entirely trusted herself), and she did as Anya said and claimed she'd lost her voice (it wasn't really a lie, it was just psychological rather than physical) and she got through it. After class Anya said she had to make a stop, and asked if Lexa would be okay getting home.

She said that she would, and she was, mostly, as long as she kept her eyes on the ground and didn't let herself see anything that might bring up any kind of memory, because she was pretty sure that if that happened, it would swallow her whole, and there would be no coming back.

Lexa dropped her backpack in her room, and went to the kitchen, opening the fridge and looking inside, pulling out ingredients and trying to figure out how to turn it into food, but mostly failing so that when Anya got home she was just staring helplessly at a bunch of stuff on the counter while she slowly chopped an onion and pretended that that was why tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"It's a start," Anya said, coming over and taking the knife away. "What good meal doesn't need a little onion?"

Lexa looked up and saw the bag she'd set on the counter, and her stomach dropped. "No," she said, the first word that actually made its way past the lump in her throat all day. "Anya, no."

"Yes. It's her birthday."

"She's not here."

"You think she's not?" Anya asked. "She's here," she said, and touched Lexa's forehead, "and here," her heart, "and here and here too," touching the same places on herself. "She's here, and it's her birthday, and she loved that place."

"I know."

"So we celebrate."

Lexa knew better than to argue with a girl holding a knife. And _she_ had loved that place. And it felt wrong, and it felt right, and the only way out was through, no matter how much it hurt. So they would celebrate. 

They ate dinner, and after dinner, they split the two cupcakes in half, so they each got both flavors – Lexa's favorite, and _hers_. 

_Happy birthday, my love,_ she thought.

There was no answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry! This chapter was written back in November, and the timing of its posting is an unfortunate coincidence. I hope everyone is doing all right. I'm here if you need me. ♥


	25. Clarke

"So talk," Clarke said. "Make this all make sense to me, since you seem to think that you can."

"Not here," Finn said. "Come back to my room with me."

Clarke snorted. "Seriously?"

"What?" His eyes were wide, innocent, like he really didn't see how ludicrous a suggestion it was that she would follow him back to his room – the room where his bed was – when she had every reason to believe that in doing so before she had unwittingly walked into the position of being The Other Woman. "Do you really want to talk about this out in public, where anyone can hear?"

"Why not?" Clarke asked. " _I_ don't have anything to be ashamed of."

"Neither do I," Finn said, but the way he didn't quite meet her eyes when he said it made it clear that he _was_ ashamed, at least a little, and that was a good sign, wasn't it? That he knew that he'd done something wrong? 

"I'm not going back to your room with you," she said. "Even if you can explain this all away."

He looked stung, like she'd slapped him or something, and she might have felt bad about it if she wasn't so pissed. "Your room, then?"

"No. No rooms."

"I just... wouldn't you rather go somewhere quiet? I know that there's already been some... some misunderstanding between us, and I don't want anything to get lost because you can't hear me, you know? That won't help either one of us. Do you know of somewhere else quiet we could go?"

Clarke sighed. "Fine," she said. She started walking, and he fell in beside her, following her lead as she led him away from the dining hall, down a side street to a little courtyard she'd discovered accidentally when she was still learning her way around campus. She came here to think sometimes, and to draw, and sure, there was a risk in sharing it with him, that it wouldn't be a place for her to be able to go to get away from everyone anymore, but it wasn't the only place that she had, and she was willing to give this up if it meant that he would actually start talking.

They sat on a bench, and as soon as they did Finn turned toward her and reached for her hand. She pulled it back, pressing both of her hands between her knees. The gesture could be mistaken for just something that one did when one's hands were cold, she supposed, but if he thought that then he was dumber than she thought.

"Start talking," Clarke commanded again. "Because this must be a really great story."

"I'm not really sure where to start," Finn said after a second. "It's just... it's not really a story. I mean, it is, but there's not really a standard beginning, middle, and end."

"Yeah," Clarke muttered, "I noticed. Especially the end part. So just pick somewhere and start there."

"Like where?"

She rolled her eyes. She hadn't been planning on making this easy on him, but apparently he wasn't inclined to make it easy on her, either. "Raven," she said. "Who is she?"

"Raven is..." Finn sighed. "She's Raven. She's... I've known her for so long. Not my whole life, but for a lot of it. Since middle school, when her family moved to town. They lived a couple of streets over, and she was always coming around the guys when they – we – were playing, and wanting in. A lot of guys didn't really want her around, but she's tough, and she could get away with it. And she's smart. She's so smart. Brilliant, really. Probably actually a legitimate genius, although she always refused to take any of those online IQ tests to find out, saying that they were basically bullshit anyway."

"They are," Clarke said. "Basically."

"I know. But still, it would have been interesting, but she wasn't interested." He smiled crookedly. "She's kind of like a female Iron Man, in a way. Or a female Tony Stark, I guess. She can do all of that kind of stuff, just take a bunch of pieces of metal and whatever and turn it into something that actually works. Not a mech suit, not yet, although with what happened... maybe. You never know."

"What happened?" Clarke asked, getting sucked in despite herself. 

"There was... I would say it was an accident but it wasn't really an accident. It was an accident that she got hit, but..." Finn looked at her. "Maybe I shouldn't tell you this, because it's not really my story to tell. I wasn't there, not when it happened. But where she lived... my family was sort of right on the edge of the good part of town, or the in-the-middle part of town, and Raven's... hers was in the not so great part of town. Her parents weren't really around a lot; by the time we got to high school she was at my house every day, eating dinner with us practically every night. She had her own spot in the dish rotation, she was there so much. My parents were helping her with college and scholarship applications and everything, trying to find programs to get her into so that she could pursue what she wanted to without having to worry about the money part of it. And everything was working out."

He paused, looked at Clarke, sighed. "She's a year older than me, and if her parents had been on top of things, she probably could have graduated a year, maybe even two, early, or skipped a grade or something. But she got into a good program, staying local because she didn't want to leave me, but it was still a good program, and everything was looking... good. Hopeful. Except then I got accepted here, and things got a little rough, but we were making it work. Then last spring she was at a convenience store, and some guy came and tried to rob it, and I don't know if she did something crazy, tried to stop him, or if she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but she got shot."

Clarke winced. She hadn't seen that coming, but she could guess – medically, at least – where this was going. "That's why the brace and the crutch," she said. 

"Exactly."

"So then what?" He still hadn't really said anything directly about their relationship, and she wondered if that was intentional. Was he trying to downplay it, make it seem like it wasn't a big deal? Maybe it wasn't anything at all, but Raven had _definitely_ kissed him, and not in a friendly or sisterly way. No, there was definitely something there, or there had been at one time.

"So at first we weren't sure she was going to live, but she did, obviously, and then we weren't sure she was going to walk, but she did... only that took time. And I had to come back to school, and she... couldn't go back. And things got... kind of ugly between us. And when I left... what was I supposed to do? When I left I thought... I mean, I thought it was over. I thought we were done. You know? We didn't part on good terms."

"But you didn't break up."

"We did," Finn said. 

Clarke raised an eyebrow. "You said it. You said that you were breaking up with her."

"Well, no," Finn said.

"Did she say she was breaking up with you?"

"No."

"So... you weren't broken up."

"We were. We barely spoke to each other. I stopped going to see her. It's part of why I didn't go home for Christmas. I just couldn't deal with it, because I knew that she would be there, because where else was she going to go? My parents were still supporting her, you know? It would just have been awkward."

"And now she's here, and that's totally not awkward," Clarke said.

"I didn't know she was coming here," Finn said. "She talked about it sometimes, about transferring. The engineering program here is good. Really good. Better than the one she was in, but also more money, and she wasn't sure about financial aid, and then... Well, I figured she would drop it, and just stay where she was. She wasn't even supposed to be back yet. From the beginning, they'd said that she should probably expect to be out of school for a full year. That even if she was mentally up to the challenge, she might not be up to the physical demands. Engineering can be a pretty labor-intensive field. But I guess she made it work."

"I guess she did," Clarke said. "And now she's here, and kissing you."

"I didn't ask her to do that. I didn't... I didn't tell her it was okay to do that," Finn said.

"You didn't say it wasn't, either, apparently. At any point."

"I didn't know she thought we were still together," Finn said. "I... I guess I need to talk to her."

"You think?" Clarke snapped. "You probably should have talked to her before you ever got in bed with someone else. You know, just to be sure that you weren't cheating on her."

"I wasn't cheating on her," Finn said. "We're not together!"

"Tell that to her!" Clarke said. "But, I mean, okay. I get it. I pretty much threw myself at you. So maybe I should give you a pass. I was drunk and I was there and we were both lonely. Things happened. But then it happened again, and I was starting to think that maybe you actually liked me."

"I _do_ like you, Clarke," Finn said, grabbing her hand and gripping it so hard she couldn't pull away. "I more than like you. It wasn't just – you didn't throw yourself at me. And you weren't that drunk. What happened... It happened because I wanted it to. And you did, too, I hope. It happened because I've liked you ever since I met you, and I've wanted to get to know you, to go out with you."

"So why didn't you ever ask?" Clarke asked. "If you've wanted to for so long?"

"You can be a little bit intimidating," he said. "In case you haven't noticed."

She almost laughed. She almost let her own smile answer his. "Me? Intimidating?"

"You're pretty intense," he said. "It's one of the things I lo—like about you."

Clarke hadn't missed the slip, the quick change in his wording, and she would have laughed if it wasn't so un-funny. How could he love her – love anything about her – when he barely knew her? It was way too loaded a word to be tossing around, even if they'd already slept together. Especially when he was maybe probably still kind of with someone else.

"You need to talk to her," she said. "You need to figure your shit out with her before I'll even think about deciding whether to give you another chance."

"Okay," Finn said. "I will. I'll talk to her."

"Okay." She pulled her hand away from him, and it felt suddenly cold, colder even than it should have given the chill of the evening. 

"Can I walk you back?" he asked. 

"No," she said. "I'm fine on my own."

But walking back to her dorm by herself had never felt quite so lonely.


	26. Lexa

Lexa brushed past the girl standing in the little lobby of the dojang, assuming that she was someone's girlfriend or older sister or something, come to watch or pick someone up. She was too young to be any of the kids' mother, anyway. 

"Wait," the girl said, and Lexa paused, turning to look at her. It was only then that she processed what - _who_ \- she was seeing. She managed to keep her surprise from her face, but she wasn't quite so successful in suppressing a frown. "Where do I get information about signing up?"

"This isn't cardio-kickboxing," Lexa said.

"I know," the girl replied. "That's not what I'm looking for."

"And he's not here, if you're looking for him," Lexa added, because it was starting to make sense. Lincoln was a good-looking guy, and he'd been this girl's knight in shining armor, and now she had a crush, and she was going to follow him around and try to do the things that he did so that he would like her. Which was typical, and pathetic. 

"Who?" the girl asked. 

"Lincoln."

"Oh." The look on her face was some mix of annoyed and disappointed, which only served to cement Lexa's idea that this girl was here for all the wrong reasons. "That's okay. That's not why I'm here." But she was lying, at least a little bit. Maybe it wasn't the _only_ reason that she was here, but it was part of it. 

"Why _are_ you here?" Lexa asked. "Because if it's just to try and impress a boy, you'll be wasting your money, and our time." It wasn't the right attitude to have; she should be welcoming any newcomer, because even if she started for the wrong reasons, she might stay for the right ones. But it had been a long day and she wasn't in the mood to deal with people who would show up for a few weeks and then disappear because they discovered that it was hard, and that sometimes they got a little bit hurt. 

"I'm here because I almost got kidnapped," the girl said. "I'm here because some creepy asshole was following me around and managed to get his hands on me, and if it hadn't been for Lincoln and..." She stopped, her eyes narrowed. "You. You were there."

Lexa nodded, a quick dip of her chin. "I was there."

"And another girl."

"Anya."

"If it wasn't for the three of you, I don't know what would have happened. I want to be able to defend myself, if anything like that ever happened again. I know that it's not some kind of quick fix. I know that I can't just take a few classes and suddenly I'll be an expert and no one will be able to hurt me again. But if I don't start, I won't ever get to that point. So I want to start."

Lexa frowned, sizing her up, and there was something in the way that she held herself, some steel in her backbone and fire in her eyes, that made her nod. "Office is this way."

"I'm Octavia, by the way," the girl said. "Octavia Blake."

"Lexa Woods," Lexa replied. "Come on."

Octavia followed her to the office, where she gave a brief introduction to their instructor, then retreated to go change. She was closing her locker when Octavia came in. "He said that you could help me?"

"Right," Lexa said. "It's just pants and a top. You should be able to figure that much out. I recommend leaving something on underneath it – guys can get away without but unless you want to risk people getting a look down your shirt when you bend over, t-shirt or tank top – and come out when you're ready to put on your belt and I'll help you."

"Thanks," Octavia said. "I can just use any locker?"

"Any locker that doesn't already have someone's stuff in it," she said.

"Thanks," Octavia repeated. 

Lexa stepped out, going out onto the mats to start stretching. Octavia emerged from the locker room a few minutes later, holding her belt in her hands. Lexa pushed herself up from the floor and went to meet her at the edge of the mat. "Before you step on the mat, you bow," she said. "After you step off the mat, you turn and bow again."

Octavia nodded. "Got it." 

"Good. As far as this goes," Lexa took the belt from her, "it's not as easy as it looks, and it's not as hard as some people make it seem." She held it up, letting it dangle from her hand until she'd found the middle, and crouched in front of Octavia, placing it at her navel. "Middle goes here. Wrap one end all the way around you, then wrap the other over it, so that it's only a single layer in the back. Kids never get that part right. When you've got them both in the front, the one on the top goes up behind _both_ layers. Take this end, kind of make a loop, then pull this other one through." She tugged on the ends so that they formed a knot. "Next time you'll do it yourself."

"If I can remember," Octavia said. 

"If you don't, you ask," Lexa replied. "We show you again. Bow," she added, when Octavia started to step on the mat.

"Right." Octavia bowed, then followed Lexa out to stretch, not copying her exactly, but keeping an eye on her, and Lexa would have been more annoyed but there weren't many other people there for her to take a cue from. Mostly teens and tweens who had gotten bumped up to the adult class due to their size or rank, and they were busy talking about god knew what, but it was probably inane.

"When he calls for everyone to line up, you'll be over there," Lexa said, pointing. "We line up by rank, starting in that corner and going back, usually three lines across. You're lowest ranking, so you'll be in that corner. It gives you the best vantage to see what other people are doing if you get lost. I'm sure he'll have someone work with you after warm-ups." She was almost equally sure that that someone would be her, since she was the highest ranking, but maybe not. He knew – had to know – that she wasn't much of a teacher. She didn't have the patience. Especially not now.

But after they'd warmed up, he looked right at her. "Lexa, go work with Octavia in the back. Just basic kicks and strikes to the small targets to start. Work at her pace."

"Yes sir," she responded, because that was pretty much the only acceptable response when given a command by the instructor. She grabbed one of the small paddle targets and headed for the back, motioning for Octavia to join her. She gave a quick set of instructions, and was honestly surprised at how quickly Octavia picked it all up.

"You have no previous training?" she asked.

"No," Octavia said, taking the target that was offered to her so that she could hold it for Lexa. "Why?"

"You're doing well," Lexa said, the compliment not exactly grudging, but she wasn't in the habit if boosting people's egos too much, either. "A lot of people are pretty clumsy with things for the first few weeks." Or months, or years, until it got to the point where Lexa wondered why they stuck with it at all, but what they did and why they did it was their own business, she guessed. As long as they didn't hold her up or hold her back, she couldn't complain. 

"Thank you," Octavia said. "I guess I'm just motivated."

Lexa nodded, and turned her attention to making her own kicks as perfect as possible, because she was supposed to be a good example here. When she had completed her set of ten, she took the target back. Finally they were called back to the main group to finish class with some circuit training, before a final stretch and heading off the mats. Lexa, due to her rank, was the first one off, and waited for Octavia to follow at the end of the line.

When she reached the edge of the mat, she hesitated for only a second, then turned and bowed, and Lexa nodded. "Good," she said, heading for the locker room to change back into her regular clothes. She wasn't looking forward to lugging her bag home, but she didn't have a ride so she didn't have a choice, unless she got permission to leave it in the office. Master Gustus would probably be okay with it. 

"So how often do you train?" Octavia asked. 

Lexa shrugged. "I try to come four times a week," she said. "Sometimes it doesn't happen. We recommend training at least twice a week."

Octavia nodded. "I don't have any evening classes this semester, so I can probably do that. But group projects and all of that... Hopefully it won't be too hard to balance. I want to do this. I want to—"

"Then you will," Lexa said. "If it is important to you, you'll make it happen." She could see the determination in Octavia, the drive to accomplish whatever task was set for her, or that she set for herself. 

"Thanks for helping me," Octavia said. 

Lexa shrugged. "It's part of being a black belt."

"How long does it take to get there?" Octavia asked. "To black belt."

"If you train regularly and test every cycle, about three years," Lexa said. "What year are you?"

"I'm a freshman."

"If you stick with it, you can achieve black belt before you graduate," Lexa said. "It might be close, and if you take summers off you probably won't make it, but it can be done."

"How long did it take you?"

"Longer," Lexa said. "But I moved a lot."

"How long have you been training?"

"Ten years?" Lexa said. "Eleven? Something like that. Not always consistently, although we tried."

"Why did you move so much?"

"Air Force brat," she said. "I didn't have a choice. I went where my father was stationed."

"That sucks," Octavia said.

"Why?" Lexa asked. "I have seen more of the world than most people ever will."

"Just... always leaving behind the people you care about?"

Lexa shrugged. "You get used to it." Which pretty much meant that you learned to stop caring about people, because it was just easier. Until you didn't. Until you forgot the rules and you got attached, you got involved... and then it all blew up in your face and you were left alone – more alone than you knew it was possible to be – empty and hollow and gutted. "I have to go."

"All right," Octavia said. "Thanks again."

Lexa didn't respond. She went to the office and asked Master Gustus about leaving her bag, and he just gestured to the corner, absorbed in some kind of paperwork. So she dumped it there and left with a quick good night. 

She saw Octavia getting into a car, and for a split second she wished that she might notice that Lexa didn't have one and offer her a ride, but then she wasn't really in the mood to deal with strangers, so probably better that she didn't. She just started walking, her hands shoved deep in her pockets, and tried very hard not to think about all of the things out there in the dark.


	27. Clarke

Everything might have been simpler if Raven hadn't turned up in one of Clarke's classes. Out of sight, out of mind, and all that. If she didn't have to see her, then she could either forget that she existed, or at least forget that she had lost Finn to her. Sort of. Mostly.

It was complicated. 

It was made more complicated by the fact that as far as she was concerned, she had never _had_ Finn in the first place, or had never fully committed to having Finn. If that made any sense. Which she was pretty sure it didn't.

It was made _even more_ complicated by the fact that she liked Raven. If they were just two people who happened to meet, a transfer student looking for some help navigating campus, or who sat down in the empty seat next to Clarke in class, they might have gotten along great. But they weren't. 

Only Clarke wasn't actually sure that Raven knew that. Obviously Raven knew that she knew Finn, because she'd seen them together. But did she know that Clarke _knew_ Finn? In the Biblical sense? If she did, would she still be so nice?

Clarke wanted to ask, but she didn't. She couldn't. Because she didn't know if Finn had talked to her, and if he hadn't then it wasn't her place to do so, and if he had and they were back together, then it would just make her look... desperate? Jealous? She didn't even know. If he had and they had broken up, then it would be rubbing salt into the wounds, wouldn't it? 

Unless she'd really had it all wrong, and Raven had kissed him, sure, but it really had been friendly, or just... one last kiss to make sure that there was no chemistry left? Or so that Finn could remember what he was missing and would never have again because they were broken up, and Raven knew it and was totally okay with it? 

If that was the case, though, why hadn't Finn reached out and told her? Why hadn't he said, 'Hey, I talked to Raven, and we're definitely on the same page, we're definitely broken up, and would you like to go out some time?'

Maybe he was giving her space. Maybe he was waiting for her to reach out to him. Maybe...

"Hey," Raven said, dropping into the seat next to her and propping her crutch up nearby, only to have it slide and hit the floor with a clatter. She leaned down to pick it up with a groan. "I can't wait until I don't need that anymore," she said. "It's so annoying."

"But it would make a great weapon," Octavia chimed in from Clarke's other side. 

"Everything looks like a weapon to you these days," Clarke said. She looked at Raven and rolled her eyes. "She's decided to become Octavia, Warrior Princess."

"Xena was awesome, man," Raven said. "Good for you." She grinned at Octavia, who grinned back. "But yeah, it's good for getting people out of my way a lot of the time. I'm just worried one of these times someone is going to decide to get obnoxious and I just won't be able to control myself. And I'm way too pretty for prison."

"I've seen Orange is the New Black," Octavia teased. "You're totally not."

Raven snorted. "Maybe that's what I need," she said. "A vacation from men."

Clarke looked at her sharply, and then tried to pretend that she hadn't, waiting to see if Raven would elaborate. But of course class started then, ending the conversation, and she was left wondering and trying to focus on what their professor was saying. Because whether she really cared or not, she needed to learn this stuff if she was going to pass the class. But the truth was that she honestly had no idea what he was talking about most of the time, and relied on the weekly review/discussion sessions with one of the TAs to fill her in on what was actually important to know. The professor had a tendency to ramble, and never about the things that really interested Clarke. Battle tactics and dates and all of that were great, she supposed, but she was more interested in the people involved.

By the end of class, she had completely tuned out. She hoped that Octavia or Raven had taken some notes, because when she looked down at her notebook the only thing written on the page was the date at the top. 

Raven noticed. "Everything okay?" she asked.

Clarke shrugged. "Sure. Everything's fine."

"I hate that word," Raven said, pushing herself up and reaching for her crutch. "Fine. It's so meaningless. It's the word you use when you feel socially obligated to answer but you really don't want to tell the person what's really going on. Which, you know, I get it. We barely know each other. I have no right to your deepest, darkest secret feelings. But I'll listen if you want to talk. I don't exactly have a lot of friends here yet, but I'd like to think maybe you – both of you – are among them."

"Of course," Clarke said, and meant it, and was confused by meaning it, because she was supposed to hate Raven. All of the TV shows, books, movies, everything told her that she was supposed to hate Raven, because she was trapped in the unavoidable YA trope of The Love Triangle.

Which could be easily solved with a threesome, she'd often thought, but mainstream media really didn't seem to agree. One man, one woman. That was always the endgame. Every once in a very great while, it was two men or two women (and if she looked there was probably statistics on it) but mostly heterosexual monogamy won the day. 

And not that she was really thinking that that was the solution here. Maybe it would work for Finn, but she didn't think it would work for her or Raven. She didn't know if Raven went that way, and even if she did, whether she would be interested in Clarke, and Clarke didn't know if she would be interested in Raven that way, and really, maybe it would be okay for them to be friends and for Finn to be with both of them but she was really pretty sure that there was no way he could actually handle it without someone – or everyone – getting hurt.

"Lunch?" Octavia suggested. 

"I'm down," Raven said. 

Clarke nodded and picked up Raven's bag, helping her get it slung across her back. They were pretty much the last people to leave the classroom, but that was usually the case since it was easier for Raven to not have to fight the tide of people making a hasty getaway.

They went to the dining hall and found a table, and Clarke put Raven's food on her own tray, and Raven grimaced and thanked her. "Seriously, this thing is really starting to cramp my style."

"How is PT going?" Clarke asked. 

"It's going," she said. "I had a meeting with a doctor, a specialist in nerve damage, and unfortunately the news wasn't great. She thinks that at this point, everything has pretty much stabilized, and it's unlikely that there will be significant improvement as far as the nerves go at this point. So... the fact that I can't really feel my left foot? Isn't going to go away any time soon. Probably ever. So yeah. She thinks that as I get more used to it, I'll learn to balance better and will be able to go without the crutch, but the brace is pretty much here to stay." 

"That sucks," Octavia said. 

"It doesn't suck as much as dying," Raven said, "or being completely paralyzed. So I'll take it."

Other people probably would have congratulated her on having such a good attitude about it, but Clarke was pretty sure there was no way to say anything like that without it being completely condescending. And from what Finn had said, and what Clarke had seen, one leg was only a tiny part of who Raven was, and she wasn't going to let it stop her, or even slow her down much. Maybe it would keep her from being able to climb as well as some people, or crawl into small spaces, but it wouldn't stop her from doing whatever else she put her mind to.

"Have you been assigned a discussion section yet?" Octavia asked. "It meets on Fridays, which sucks because it is my only Friday class, but it's usually more interesting than actual class. Depending on who you have."

"Yeah," Raven said. "At two, with... Anya, I think?"

Octavia grinned. "Same as us. Awesome."

"Maybe they did it on purpose," Clarke said. "Since you sit with us and all."

"Maybe," Raven said. "Good to know there will be at least a few people with brains in there with me."

"Aww." Octavia flipped her hair. "You really know how to give a girl a compliment."

Raven laughed. "You want people to think that you're an airhead sometimes, but you're not."

Clarke's eyes narrowed, but Octavia didn't seem to mind. "Sometimes it's useful to have people underestimate you," she said. "Let them set the bar low for you, and then they're the ones who end up looking like idiots."

"Wouldn't you rather have the bar set high to start with?" Clarke asked. "I'm sick of people assuming that I'm less capable because I'm female, or blonde, or whatever."

"Is it annoying? Yes, absolutely," Octavia said. "But like I said, sometimes it's useful. Because if they have low expectations, even if you only perform up to the level of everyone else, and not above it, they'll still be impressed, because they didn't expect anything from you to begin with. And if you manage to work above the level of everyone else—"

"Then they hate you for it," Raven said. "At least in my experience. Because their poor little male egos can't handle the idea that a woman can be as good as them, or maybe even better."

"Not _all_ men," Clarke chimed in, sarcasm dripping from her voice, and the other two laughed. 

"No matter what you do, you can't win," Octavia said. "It would be easier if we could just opt out of the game."

"I'm pretty sure that's not an option," Clarke said. "Unfortunately. Hell, even women pit themselves against each other, like only one woman can win in the game of life. Like, 'I hope that Jessica Jones blows Supergirl out of the water.' Because there's not enough room in the world for two female superheroes? It's ridiculous."

"We should make a pact," Raven said, "that no matter what happens, we'll never turn on each other. At least not for any stupid petty socially mandated reason. You are fully allowed to turn on me if I become some kind of evil genius supervillain and the fate of the world rests on you putting a stop to my nefarious plans." She held out one hand, her pinkie crooked.

"We're making a pact as a pinkie promise?" Octavia's eyebrows were approaching her hairline.

"Did you want to swear a blood oath?" Raven asked. "Because I am pretty sure these butter knives are not going to cut it – pun 100% completely intended."

"Pinkie promise it is," Octavia said, and hooked hers with Raven's.

"Clarke?" Raven said. "Are you in?"

Promising not to turn on Raven, when she knew – even if Raven maybe probably didn't – that they were already pitted against each other... Except they weren't. They didn't have to be, just because society, the media - _patriarchy_ \- said that they should be. Whatever happened with Finn would happen. But he was the one who'd screwed up, not Raven, and whatever happened, she wasn't going to hold it against her.

"I'm in," she said, and hooked her pinkie with the other two.


	28. Lexa

By the time Lexa processed the fact that there were too many pairs of shoes - _way_ too many pairs of shoes – outside the door, it was too late. She'd already put her key in the lock, twisted it, pushed it open. She took half a step inside, looking around, trying to figure out what was going on. 

The living room was full of people. Young people. Students. Not ones she knew, or at least not that she recognized right off. Anya's friends? No, too young. Anya's students?

Then she remembered. Anya and the other TAs for her military history class were having some kind of competition to see whose students could do the best, and she had mentioned that she was bribing her discussion sections. Anyone who got an A on the test, she would cook dinner for. She'd told Lexa about it, had maybe even mentioned when it was happening and Lexa had forgotten, or maybe she hadn't told her when, she didn't know, her memory was still flaky at times and she still wasn't sure she wasn't losing her damned mind entirely, and now there were people in the house that Lexa didn't know and she couldn't cope.

She shut the door again, yanking on the key to free it and growling with frustration when it didn't work. She twisted it back – fucking deadbolts – and yanked it loose, then jammed her feet back into her shoes.

The door opened a second later. "Where are you going?"

Anya. Of course. She'd seen, or heard, or something. Noticed, anyway, and now she was coming to try to smooth things over. 

"Out," Lexa said. "I just remembered there was somewhere I needed to go."

"Where?"

"The library," Lexa said. "There's a book I need for a paper. I meant to pick it up and I forgot to do it earlier."

"The library is closed," Anya said. "It closes early on Saturdays."

"Not the school library," Lexa said. "The public library."

"Also closes early on Saturdays." She closed the door behind her, took a step to close the distance between them.

Lexa would have stepped back if she hadn't thought it would make Anya feel like she had some kind of power in this situation, or like she was running... which she was, but she could at least try to do it with a little bit a dignity, right?

"Do you want me to ask them to leave?" Anya asked. "I thought I told you, but maybe I forgot. We can reschedule. I only just started cooking."

"No," Lexa said. "It's fine. It's your house. I'll just come back later." _When they're gone._

"You don't have to do that. You can come in." Anya looked at her, frowning. "It's your house too, Lexa."

She kept saying it, but it didn't make it any more true than it had been the first time. Lexa lived here, sure, but it wasn't her house. It wasn't even really Anya's house, if they were being technical, but she was just... an extended guest. Extended enough that she knew where everything was kept, but when it came right down to it, if Anya told her to leave, she had to be gone. 

Not that she would. 

"It's not a big deal," Lexa said. "You probably told me and I forgot. I'll just go out for a little while. You can text me when they leave."

Anya looked at her, shook her head. "Are you serious? Because there are people in the house, you're just going to go... what? Wander the streets until they're gone? You can't... You can't keep living like this, Lexa."

"Why not?" she asked, irritation rising because of course Anya couldn't just let it go. That would be too damn easy. "It works for me."

"No, it doesn't," Anya said. "It doesn't work for you. You're not even – what you're doing isn't even living, Lexa. It's surviving. It's existing. But it's not living."

"I don't deserve better," Lexa said. Maybe honesty would shut her up. "You think that I do, but I don't."

It didn't. "Because of what happened? That wasn't your fault, Lexa!"

"It wasn't _not_ my fault, either," Lexa said. "If I hadn't – if we weren't – "

"Stop." Anya had reached out and grabbed her, digging her fingers into Lexa's upper arm hard enough, even through her jacket, that it felt like it might leave a mark, hard enough that it actually stopped her, froze her in that moment, trapped in Anya's gaze. 

"It is _not_ your fault," Anya said. "None of it is your fault, and the sooner that you realize that, the sooner you'll stop punishing yourself, and the sooner you'll actually heal."

"Maybe I don't want to," Lexa said. "Maybe this is... Maybe I..." But she couldn't finish the sentence, couldn't even finish the thought, because it was all tangled up like the thicket of briars around Sleeping Beauty, and at the center of it was... what? She didn't know. Fucking metaphors.

"Come inside," Anya said. "Go to your room if you want, but come inside. Otherwise all I'll be thinking about is where you are and what you're doing."

Given the fact that Anya still hadn't relaxed her grip on Lexa's arm, she wasn't sure she actually had a choice in the matter. But she slowly slipped off her shoes and followed Anya in, walking straight past everyone and retreating to her room without a word. It was rude, but she didn't care. These people, whoever they were, didn't matter to her. 

No one did. It was the only way to get by.

"Long day," Anya said, making excuses for her. If anyone questioned it, Lexa didn't hear. She plugged her headphones into her phone and started playing some music to drown out the chatter of voices that made its way around the edges of her door, interspersed with bursts of laughter, and she realized then that she couldn't remember the last time that she laughed. Literally couldn't remember. Maybe she had, once or twice, in Australia, in those rare moments when she'd been so far out of her element she could almost forget, for a little while, who she was and where she'd come from and why. 

Or maybe not. Maybe the last time she'd laughed was seven months ago. Almost eight. Or longer. Had she laughed before it had all fallen apart? She'd smiled – surely she'd smiled – but had she laughed?

She turned the music up, let it fill her up as she tried to make herself empty – not just the cored out, gutted empty that came with loss, but truly empty – devoid of all thought, all emotion, everything. 

Her door opened. She'd forgotten to lock it. She didn't move at first, assuming it was Anya, coming to tell her that her guests were gone, but the smells of cooking wafted in, and then someone was in her room, she could sense them approaching even with her eyes closed, and Anya wouldn't come in unless invited.

Lexa tensed, cracking open an eye, assessing the threat level while still trying to appear asleep. Why couldn't people just leave her alone? 

It wasn't Anya. It was some blonde girl who looked somehow familiar, but she couldn't place her. She was saying something, and Lexa grudgingly pulled off her headphones to hear her. 

"Sorry," the girl said. "Anya wanted me to tell you that dinner is almost ready, if you want to join us. You didn't answer when I knocked."

"So you just came in."

"You didn't answer when I knocked," the girl repeated. 

"And it didn't occur to you that maybe there was a reason for it?"

"It occurred to me," she said. 

"But you came in anyway."

The girl shrugged. "Anya told me to tell you. She doesn't like it when instructions aren't followed." She flashed a smile then, and there was something in her eyes, some sort of mischief that made Lexa soften a little, although she wasn't sure why. She ought to be pissed. She _was_ pissed. 

Except maybe the whole making herself empty thing had worked a little too well, because the anger felt distant, more like an echo of an emotion than the feeling itself. 

"Now you've told me," Lexa said. "Mission accomplished."

"Mission accomplished. Maybe it'll be good for a few bonus points."

Lexa bit the inside of her cheek as a smile threated at the corner of her mouth. "I don't think I qualify as an extra credit assignment."

The girl shrugged again. "It was worth a shot. You could always put in a good word for me."

"Why would I do that?" Lexa asked. 

"Why wouldn't you?"

"I don't know you."

"I'm Clarke," the girl said, extending her hand. 

Lexa didn't take it. "Lexa."

"I know," Clarke said, smiling again. It was a good smile, a real one. There was nothing hiding in that smile, no ulterior motive (all jokes about extra credit aside). She was just being nice, and she didn't seem to think that there was any reason to expect anything but the same in return. "Did you take that?" she asked, gesturing toward the photo hung on the wall. Lexa had thought about hanging up a few more, but hadn't gotten around to it. What was the point when she didn't know how long she was staying?

"Yes," Lexa said. 

"It's good," Clarke said. "Really good." She looked away from Lexa to take in the picture more fully, taking a few steps toward it... which meant a few steps farther into Lexa's room, and Lexa should have minded more than she did, considering she hadn't even invited her in, but what artist doesn't like having their work admired?

"Thank you."

"I'm not very good with a camera," Clarke said. "I mean, I take the occasional selfie or shot of something that interests me on my phone, but I've never even had a real camera."

"The cameras on phones have gotten pretty good recently," Lexa said. "Obviously it varies, but you can get some pretty great shots with them, if you know what you're doing."

"But that wasn't taken with a camera phone," Clarke said. "No way."

"No," Lexa agreed. "It wasn't." She could show Clarke some that had, but no. The point was to make her go away, not to make her stay. Even if this felt like the most normal conversation she'd had in a very long time. 

She was spared having to make any kind of decision about that, though, when someone called for Clarke. "I guess that means the food is ready," she said. "Coming?"

_No,_ Lexa thought. _No. I'm not following you. I'm not giving you the satisfaction._

"Yes," she said, and got up.

The smile on Anya's face made it worth it, anyway.


	29. Clarke

Clarke took the plate that was handed to her and pulled out one of the stools at the little breakfast bar, preferring that to trying to eat with her plate balanced on her lap. Lexa looked at her for a second, almost glaring, and then pulled out the stool beside her and sat. 

"Did I take your seat?" Clarke asked. 

"It doesn't matter," Lexa replied, which wasn't a no. 

"We can switch," Clarke said. "If it bothers you."

"It's fine," Lexa said. 

"Okay," Clarke said. "I just know how weird it can be. Like sleeping on the wrong side of the bed, or when you go into a bathroom that you go into all the time, but someone is in _your_ stall." She thought she saw the tiniest flicker of a smile quirking Lexa's mouth, and it made her grin. "But really, unless you want to have our elbows duking it out, it's better if I stay on this side. Unless you're left-handed, too."

"No," Lexa said. 

"Then it's safer this way."

"Noted," Lexa said. She took the plate that Anya offered her with a soft thanks, but didn't start to eat right away.

"Everyone," Anya said. "This is my roommate Lexa. Lexa, everyone."

Clarke glanced at her, saw her lift her hand in the lamest excuse for a wave she'd ever seen.

"I didn't know you two lived together," Octavia said. 

Clarke looked at her sharply, and then looked back at Lexa, and suddenly something clicked, like a puzzle piece falling into place. She knew that Octavia had started taking martial arts classes (she'd tried to get Clarke to go, too, but Clarke wasn't big on the idea of being punched and kicked for fun) and she remembered her mentioning that the people who had helped her on New Year's Eve trained there – all of them, not just Lincoln. Who Octavia was still kind of stalking a little bit, but in a nice way (or so she claimed). 

This was the girl. The girl she'd barely noticed, who had been so intent on examining her knuckles she hadn't looked up. And Anya was the third, and why hadn't she seen that right off?

"Just since Lexa came back from her semester abroad. I figured I would spare her having to move in with a stranger halfway through the year." Anya looked over and grinned at her. Lexa's expression didn't really change.

"Where did you go?" The question came from one of the guys who had showed up, who was apparently from Anya's other discussion section. Monty, if Clarke remembered correctly. Unless it was Jasper. They were nothing alike, except they were everything alike, and they had been introduced pretty much as a unit, and she was too embarrassed to ask which one was which.

"Australia," Lexa said. 

"And you survived?" the other Monty-or-Jasper asked, breaking into a wide grin. "The entire country is out to kill you, from what I've read on the internet."

Lexa rolled her eyes. "Obviously I survived," she said.

"I dunno," Monty-or-Jasper said. "You could be some kind of zombie."

"Don't mind him," the first Monty-or-Jasper said. "He's an idiot sometimes. And obsessed with zombies."

"Did you get to hold a koala?" Harper asked. "There's always pictures of famous people holding koalas when they visit Australia."

"I never made it to the koala sanctuary," Lexa said. "So no, I never held one."

"Bummer."

"Kangaroos? Did you see kangaroos?"

"Yes, I saw kangaroos."

Back to Monty – or Jasper – whichever the one with the goggles was. "Duck-billed platypuses? Platypii?"

"Only in a zoo."

"Sharks?" This came from Miller. "Did you see any sharks?"

"Not up close," Lexa said. 

"Did you surf? I've heard the surfing is incredible."

"It is," Lexa said. "And yes, I surfed, every chance that I got."

"It sounds like it must have been amazing," Octavia said. 

"Do you have pictures?" Raven asked.

"Yes," Lexa said. "I have lots of pictures."

"Can we see?"

Lexa hesitated, then nodded. 

"Give her a chance to eat first," Anya said, and she was smiling as she said it but there was something in her tone, the vaguest hint of an edge that Clarke picked up on. Anya was protective of Lexa. Why? It was pretty obvious that she could take care of herself, from what Clarke had seen and what Octavia had said. But there were threats that weren't physical, and there was something closed off, withdrawn about Lexa, and maybe that was what made Anya go all mother bear over her. 

The conversation moved on, and Clarke felt Lexa relax a little as she was let off the hook. She turned to look at her, smiling. "Sorry," she said. 

"Why?" Lexa asked. 

"For them giving you the third degree."

"You are in a position to apologize for them?" Lexa asked. 

"No. It's just..." _It's just that you kind of gave us all the impression that you didn't want us here,_ Clarke thought, but she didn't want to stir up trouble, so she kept it to herself.

"They're curious. They're allowed to be curious." Lexa looked at her, her eyebrows up. "Aren't you?"

"Well, yes," Clarke admitted. 

"Then you shouldn't apologize."

"Fine," Clarke said, because she didn't know what else to say. "You'll really show us pictures?"

"I don't say things that I don't mean," Lexa said, holding Clarke's gaze for a long second, and then turned her attention back to her food. The conversation was over, and it left Clarke with a funny feeling that somehow Lexa had been talking about more than just the pictures, but she wasn't sure what else it could mean. Was it meant as a promise, or a warning? And why would she need to give Clarke either?

When they'd all finished eating (except the boys, who were on seconds or thirds, and thank god that Anya apparently knew how to cook for an army) Lexa went into her room and came out with her laptop. She started fidgeting with the TV cables, until Monty-or-Jasper (the one without the goggles) had offered to help. Within a couple of minutes, the laptop was hooked up to the TV, and they were all watching a slide show of pictures from Australia, with limited narration from Lexa.

"I didn't take that one," Lexa said, when she got to a picture of someone surfing. "Some guy on the beach did, and sent it to me."

"Is that you?" Octavia asked.

"Yes."

"Wow. That looks intense."

"It was," Lexa said. "There had just been a storm, and the surf was high. Not a lot of people were out, which was nice. When the beach gets crowded, it gets hard to get a wave, especially when there are a lot of tourists or people new to surfing out, who don't know – or just don't follow – the rules."

"There are rules?" Harper asked. "To surfing? You mean for competitions."

"No," Lexa said. "I mean for who gets to take a wave. A lot of it is just being a decent human being and waiting your turn. If you just got a wave and paddled back out, you don't necessarily get to take the next good wave that comes along, if there are others who have been waiting longer."

"And two people can't surf the same wave?"

"If it's big enough, maybe," Lexa said, "but you're pretty much just asking for collisions doing that."

"Did you ever collide with anyone?" someone asked.

"I've been crashed into, yeah," Lexa said.

"What happened? Did you get hurt?"

She shrugged. "Not badly." Which wasn't a no. She was good at saying yes without saying yes, Clarke noticed. She was also good at changing the subject when she didn't feel like talking about something anymore, as she moved on to another set of pictures.

When they had seen enough that everyone's curiosity had been satisfied, Anya asked, "Who wants dessert?"

"You know, we're always told that there's no such thing as stupid questions," Raven said, "but that is actually the stupidest question I've ever heard."

Anya flashed a grin at her. "Whoever told you that there's no such thing as stupid questions is an idiot," she said. "Spend one day as a TA and you will learn that. But shh, don't tell the others that I said that."

"Others?" someone asked.

"The people who aren't here," Anya said. "This is everyone who got A's on the test, remember?"

"Oh yeah," he said, then smirked. 

"What are we having?" Octavia asked. 

"Crème brulée," Anya said. "Because if there is anything that's better than dessert, it's dessert plus fire."

"Are you sure you trust these guys with fire?" Clarke asked. "It's the middle of winter. You probably want your house to still be standing when we leave."

"If anyone can't handle burning a little sugar, they will be relegated to the living room and will have to wait for a responsible adult to do it for them," Anya said, going to the fridge and pulling out a tray of little bowls. "Where's—" she started, but Lexa had already gotten up and retrieved a small butane torch from one of the cupboards, which she proceeded to light.

They each got to take a turn at burning the sugar sprinkled on top of the custard, with mixed results. Most of them – especially the boys – had a tendency to put the flame too close and burn it, and start melting the custard underneath while they were at it. Some were overly cautious and it took forever. Lexa fixed hers last, and Clarke couldn't help watching her out of the corner of her eye, the intense look of concentration on her face as she made sure that the sugar was sprinkled evenly, and then turned to a perfect golden brown crust. 

"Yours is prettier than mine," Clarke said. She'd tried, but it had ended up pretty uneven. It wasn't blackened, though, so it ought to taste all right.

Lexa reached over and took the bowl from in front of her, replacing it with her own. 

"You—that's not what I meant," Clarke said. "I was just admiring..."

"It's yours," Lexa said, handing her a spoon. She picked up Clarke's, grabbing a spoon for herself, and retreated to her room, clearly having had enough social interaction for the night. No one tried to stop her, and the party broke up not long after they'd all scraped the bottoms of the bowls, trying to get every last bite.

Before they left, Clarke said she needed to go to the bathroom, but really, she just wanted an excuse to go down the hall again. She knocked at the door, but there was no answer. This time, she didn't go in, sensing that Lexa had already been pushed far enough for one night. She just hoped that Lexa hadn't put her headphones back on. "Good night, Lexa," she called quietly through the door. 

Maybe she imagined it, but she thought that maybe, just maybe, she heard a voice answering on the other side, "Good night, Clarke."


	30. Lexa

Not long after Clarke (and the rest of them) left, there was a knock at Lexa's door. "Go away," she said, knowing that it wouldn't work, but deciding it was worth a try anyway. 

Anya knocked again. "Go away," Lexa called again. "I've already accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior."

"Is that what Jehovah's Witnesses want you to do?" Anya asked through the door.

"That and give up celebrating birthdays, holidays, and anything else remotely fun, I'm pretty sure. So you can understand why I'm not interested."

Anya snorted and knocked again. 

"Who's there?" Lexa tried. 

"Interrupting cow."

"Don't e—"

"Mooooooo."

"Are you for real?" Lexa asked. But she was fighting a smile... and losing. 

Anya knocked yet again.

"You're just going to keep doing that to see what I say, aren't you?" Lexa said.

"Or until you come out," Anya said, her knuckles rapping insistently on the wood.

"Unless you're selling Girl Scout cookies, I'm not answering the door," Lexa told her.

"Why would you want those?" Anya asked. "They're not even made from real Girl Scouts."

"I was a Boy Scout once," Lexa said, " _and_ a Brownie."

"Until some brat got scared," Anya finished the line for her. "Come on. Open up. Come help me clean up."

"Oh, your precious little straight-A babies left you a mess?" Lexa teased. But she pushed herself up off her bed, grabbing the little bowl that her crème brulee had been in and finally opened the door. "How is that my fault? Or my problem?"

"It's not," Anya said. "But you're such a good friend, I know you'll help me anyway."

"Isn't that what dishwashers are for?" Lexa asked. 

"Pots and pans and dishwashers don't always get along, and there's more than one load. Can you just make sure that no dishes have been left in unexpected places? Because I'm going to be pissed if something ended up under the couch and turns into a science experiment and possibly develops sentient life later in the semester."

Lexa rolled her eyes, but she went and picked up the few stray dishes – mostly cups – that hadn't made their way back to the kitchen. She loaded the dishwasher while Anya got started on the dishes that couldn't fit. 

"I'm glad you came inside," Anya said. "I know it's not easy for you, dealing with people."

Lexa shrugged. "It wasn't so bad," she said, and it was true. It hadn't been as bad as she'd expected, even though it was basically a bunch of strangers invading the one place where she felt almost safe. (Almost. There were some demons that she could never escape because they lived in her own head.) 

"Good. I'll try to remember to give you a little more warning next time, but at least now I know it won't be a complete disaster if it slips my mind." 

_Next time?_ , Lexa thought, but she didn't say it. This was Anya's house; she could do whatever she wanted in it. And if that was inviting over a bunch of undergrads to bribe them to keep getting good grades, well... so be it. With warning, she could make plans not to be around that Anya couldn't instantly shoot down. "So you're planning to make this a regular thing?" she asked instead, which was almost the same thing but not quite. It at least sounded mostly neutral.

"I was thinking about it," Anya said. "What college kid isn't motivated by food?"

"Especially free food," Lexa said. "Especially _good_ free food."

"I'm not sure good even matters that much," Anya said. "The way some of them were eating, I'm not sure they even tasted it."

Lexa laughed – more a soft rush of breath than a real laugh. "They're freshman boys," she said. "What do you expect?"

"Some of them are sophomores," Anya said. "But yeah, point taken. And Raven... I'm not sure what she is. I think she might be a sophomore, but kind of a first semester junior? It's complicated."

"Semester off?"

"Not by choice, but yes. And transfer credits not transferring, and things like that. But that's why I didn't think you should take a semester off. It messes up where you fall for the rest of the time that you're in school." Anya said it like it had been her idea, but really, it had been Lexa's father who had insisted that she couldn't take time off from school. Anya just hadn't disagreed with him.

"I could have made it up in summer classes," Lexa said, "if I had to."

"I also didn't think it would be good for you to have an entire semester to just... spin out." 

_That_ Lexa believed. "Can we not talk about it?" she asked. 

"Okay," Anya said. "I'm sorry."

"It's fine. I just... I'd rather not talk about it."

"Okay." Anya looked over at her. "That was nice of you, to show your pictures from Australia and answer everyone's questions."

"You didn't think I would?"

"You aren't exactly Little Miss Show and Tell most of the time," Anya said. "Talking hasn't been your strong suit lately. And I thought you might get annoyed by all of them asking things at once."

Lexa shrugged. "What artist doesn't like to show off their work?"

"I wouldn't know," Anya said. "I can barely draw a stick figure."

She raised her eyebrows and gestured to the pot that Anya was scrubbing. "You think that doesn't count? Just because it's food doesn't mean it's not art, too. It's not like you just made spaghetti with precooked meatballs and sauce from a jar. It's like... edible performance art."

Anya turned to look at her more fully, smiling. "That may be the nicest thing you've ever said to me," she said. "I think I might need to hug you now."

"Don't you dare," Lexa said, grabbing a wooden spoon to fend her off. "Don't even think about it."

"Oh, I'm thinking about it," Anya said, dropping the dish cloth into the sink and wiping her hands on a towel. 

"Stop thinking about it."

"I don't think so." And then she lunged, and Lexa dodged, a quick shuffle-step backward, moving toward open area because two martial artists deciding to play keep-away with their bodies in a small space filled with breakable objects and knives was a recipe (no pun intended) for disaster.

They moved in sync with each other, each step, each lunge, each grab counteracted, until Lexa made the mistake of turning just a little too far, and then Anya was behind her, arms wrapped around her, pinning Lexa's own arms to her sides, and she knew how to get out of it, knew that Anya knew and that she would dodge to keep from actually getting hit, shifted to drop her weight and then froze, feeling as if her throat was suddenly swollen closed as she realized that this was the closest she'd been to another human being, the most touch she'd endured, that she'd allowed, in seven months... almost eight. 

"Let go," she gasped, and then said it again when Anya didn't respond. "Let go."

Anya's arms dropped away instantly, and she came around to look Lexa in the face, at her wide eyes and her mouth hanging slightly open as she gasped for air that seemed to be refusing to enter her lungs. "Okay," she said. "You're okay, Lexa. You're okay. Breathe in."

Lexa shook her head.

"Then breathe out," Anya said. She put her hand on Lexa's back, between her shoulder blades, and the other on her chest, putting pressure like she was forcibly compressing her lungs. Obviously she wasn't really, but it was enough to trick Lexa's mind into letting go, air rushing out and then dragging back in raggedly.

"There you go," Anya said. "Good girl. You're okay." She rubbed Lexa's back in a slow circle. "You're okay. Just keep breathing." 

She didn't apologize, and Lexa was grateful, because she didn't want to have to try to reassure her that she hadn't done anything wrong. Because she hadn't. Although it wasn't necessarily at the forefront of either of their personalities, they had given themselves leave to be a little bit goofy with each other more than they ever did with anyone else. And that was what this was. Just two people who were often a little bit uptight letting loose and being a little bit silly.

It wasn't Anya's fault that her head was a mess, and her heart more so. 

Because it had felt good to be held, to be close to someone, even if they were just playing around. It felt good to smile – to grin – and to feel alive. 

Isn't that what Anya had accused her of earlier? That she wasn't actually living? But look what happened when she did. Look what happened when, for a little while, she actually almost forgot. Not completely – she could never completely forget – but while she'd been eating, and showing her pictures, when she'd been talking with Clarke, and now with Anya... it had almost felt like what they said about time healing all wounds might be true. 

Like it might be possible to get through it, to get past it, to find the other side. She had been in the dark for so damn long, and for a minute, an evening, it had felt like she'd actually seen a little bit of light. And she'd reached for it, just a little, and... and then her body, or her mind using her body against her... had reminded her that that wasn't how this was going to go. 

There was no getting through it. There was no moving on. _She_ didn't get to get past it or move on, so Lexa shouldn't either. Wasn't that how it worked? 

She was pretty sure that a therapist would say no, would maybe even try to pull that, 'Do you think this what _she_ would want for you?' bullshit, but what did they know? They didn't know _her_. They didn't know what _she_ would have wanted, any more than Lexa could ever really know. She could guess, maybe, but she could be wrong. And a therapist would of course want you to move on, so that they could feel like they won, like they fixed you.

Lexa pushed Anya's hands away. "Don't," she said. "Thank you. But don't."

Anya sighed. "Lexa." There was more, so much more, that she wanted to say, but she didn't say it.

"Do you need me to help anymore?" Lexa asked.

"Are you going to go hide in your room if I say no?" Anya asked.

"I'm not hiding."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not. Wanting to be alone doesn't mean you're hiding."

"You're allowed to—"

"You don't get to tell me what I'm allowed to do," Lexa said. "I make my own rules."

Anya stood up, crossing her arms. "Your rules suck, Lexa."

Lexa took that to mean that the conversation was over. But now getting up and going to her room felt like she was retreating, that she was giving up, admitting defeat, proving Anya right... something. So she put in a movie instead, one of Anya's favorites, and even though Anya didn't say anything, she knew that she was secretly pleased. Why wouldn't she be? She'd won.


	31. Clarke

"So," Raven said, dropping down onto the bench opposite Clarke, her booted foot hitting her in the shin in a way that made Clarke think that, despite the fact that she knew that Raven's braced leg didn't bend as well as a normal leg would, it was maybe just a little bit on purpose. 

Clarke looked up from her textbook, the last of her grilled cheese in her hand. "So?"

"Were you planning to tell me that you're fucking my boyfriend?"

Clarke cringed. She was pretty sure that even the toughest person alive would cringe if the look Raven was giving her was aimed at them. "I'm not," she said, but her tone sounded defensive even to her. 

Raven's eyebrow went up, clearly not believing her. 

"I'm not," Clarke repeated. "I did, but... not since you showed up. Not since I..." She didn't know how to finish the sentence. _Not since I found out that you existed? Not since I figured out that Finn wasn't single? Not since I found out that you were still head-over-heels in love with him?_ Nothing seemed right, so she just gave up. 

Raven continued to stare at her, sizing her up, and a second later let out a sigh that seemed to deflate her, all of her bravado gone. "Great," she said. "That's great." She struggled to extricate herself from the booth, but when Clarke started to slide over to help her up, she waved her away.

"I never would have done it if I'd known," Clarke said. 

"Yeah," Raven said. "I know. You're too nice a girl."

"I'm not always nice," Clarke said. 

"Maybe not," Raven said, "but you're decent. And decent people don't get involved with people they know are in relationships. Even if maybe the status of the relationship is a little bit in limbo."

"Did he tell you?" Clarke asked. 

"No," Raven said. "But I see the way he looks at you, and I'm not dumb."

Clarke frowned. "I told him—after you showed up, he tried to..." Again, a sentence that there was no good way to finish. There was nothing that she could say that wouldn't make Finn look like an asshole. But he kind of was an asshole, so maybe that wasn't what stopped her. There wasn't any way to explain things that didn't make Finn look like an asshole, and that wouldn't hurt Raven, and that was the hard part. Because no girl wanted to hear that the guy she'd pretty much turned her world upside down for, the one she'd arranged her life around, had gone and fallen for someone else in the few months that they were apart, with the separation being, in large part, due to the fact that she was busy recovering from a traumatic injury.

"He tried to get back with you?" Raven asked. 

"Yeah."

"And you told him...?"

"That I wasn't going to have any part of it until you knew where things stood. Because he made it sound like he'd broken up with you, that you two weren't together anymore, but when I saw you... when you kissed him... that wasn't the look of a person who knew they'd been broken up with."

"I knew things weren't perfect," Raven said. "But no, I didn't know that we had broken up in his head. If I had, I probably wouldn't have bothered to come here. Let him have his space, right?"

"But it's a better program for you here, I thought," Clarke said. 

"It is," Raven agreed, "but the one I was in isn't bad, by any stretch. I would have done all right with it, and I wouldn't have had to deal with him, and his... whatever. With you."

"There's no 'whatever' with me," Clarke said. "Especially if he still hasn't talked to you."

This all explained why Finn hadn't actually tried to ask her out again, if he'd never had the conversation that she'd demanded he have. She had sort of assumed that he'd decided that he wanted to be with Raven after all, that he'd remembered what he'd been missing out on and made his decision to stay with her. 

"Finn's not necessarily big on talking," Raven said. "Not when he can distract you with other things." She shook her head. "I don't even know. I see how he looks at you, like a little lost puppy dog, and I remember when he used to look at me like that, and... it just sucks. Because it's not like... it's not like I can just turn it off." She looked at Clarke with a wry smile. "It would be so much easier if I could just flip a switch and be over him. Because I'm pretty sure that that's what I need to do. Get over him. Because he's obviously over me."

She looked down at the table, tracing the pattern with one fingertip absently. "But the thing is, when we're together, it doesn't feel that way. It doesn't feel like he's over me, or like we're over at all. And not just – I'm not just talking about in bed. When we're together, it feels like it used to. Most of the time. Mostly. Only then maybe you happen to walk by, or come up in conversation, and he just..." She shook her head. "I guess if we're going to break up, I'll have to be the one to do it."

"Not for me," Clarke said. "Don't do it for me."

Raven fixed her dark eyes on Clarke, and there were more emotions there than she could easily read, but mostly she just looked sad. "Not for you," she said. "For me."

She levered herself up then, and was pushing her way out of the dining hall before Clarke could stop her. Not that she'd been planning to stop her anyway. There was no reason to chase after her, and no point. She wasn't going to try to stop Raven from doing what she felt needed to be done. She didn't want to. 

But it wasn't for herself. It wasn't that she wanted Raven to break up with Finn to open the way for her to be with him, because seriously, if this was how he treated people, people who he'd known for years, been friends with, loved... if this was what it came down to, she wasn't sure she really wanted to get involved. It had been a thing, or almost been a thing, and now it wasn't, and that was okay. She was okay with it. 

She got up and dumped her trash, putting her tray on the conveyor to go back into the kitchen, and left, feeling somehow lighter than she had before.

It didn't last long. Halfway through her class, her phone started buzzing in her pocket, and felt like it didn't stop for more than a minute or two for the rest of the time. When they were finally released she pulled it out and saw that she had five missed calls, two voicemails, and several texts... all from Finn.

**FINN:** Pick up your phone.  
 **FINN:** Clarke, answer your phone. Please?  
 **FINN:** I left you a voicemail. Call me back as soon as you get a chance.  
 **FINN:** Clarke, come on, please call me.

She tapped on the phones screen, bringing up the voicemail and putting her phone to her ear. She wasn't paying attention to where she was walking, and she yelped when she was grabbed, her hand yanked away from her head.

"Shit!" she snapped. "For fuck's sake, Finn, you gave me a heart attack!"

"You look fine to me," he said. "More than fine." 

And the way that his eyes went up and down her body made her want to squirm, but she didn't want to give him the satisfaction. "For the record, if I don't answer my phone or your texts right away, it's probably because I'm in class or otherwise occupied," she said. "This is a school, after all. I do have classes to attend."

He shrugged, still grinning. "But they're not more important than me," he said. "Not when I have good news."

"Oh yeah? What's that?"

"We broke up," he said. "I mean, we've been broken up, but I just... I wanted to let her down easy, you know? I didn't want to break her heart. But we talked about it, and it's definitely over."

"Oh." Clarke swallowed. She hadn't realized that Raven was going to talk to him right that second. "That's... I'm sorry," she said. 

Finn shrugged. "It's been coming for a long time," he said. "We've been drifting apart. It's better this way. Now we can find people who really make us happy, instead of just the person that we've been with forever. It was more like a habit than a relationship at this point. And we'll still be friends and all that. That won't change."

It couldn't have been more than an hour since Raven had confronted him, Clarke thought. Two hours, maybe. But... it was a little scary how obviously okay he was with it. And he was playing it off like it had been his idea, like she hadn't broken up with him. Which, okay, maybe he thought it was, because he'd thought they were already broken up before? But she wasn't actually sure that that was true. She wasn't sure that he hadn't just said that to try and make her feel better. 

She definitely didn't feel better. Not then, not now. None of this felt good. None of this felt right. If nothing else, it was pretty shitty to hook up with her friend's ex immediately – like, literally immediately – after they broke up. Even if you'd slept with him before you knew that he and your friend were dating... or that your friend even existed. 

They'd made a pact, after all, and she was absolutely positive that this would violate that. And she valued her friendship with Raven more than anything she might or might not have with Finn.

"I don't think this is going to work," she said. "I'm sorry if I gave you the wrong impression, but... I'm not really looking for a relationship at this point. I... it felt good at the time, and I can't thank you enough for looking out for me when I was falling apart, but... this isn't what I want right now. This isn't what I need. I'm sorry."

She tried to walk away, but he grabbed her again. "What are you talking about?" he asked. "You can't just... we were good together. I know it wasn't for long, but I felt it. I felt a connection between us. You're all I think about, Clarke. It's like you're inside my head and I can't get you out, and I really don't even want to. You told me to make sure that Raven knew it was over, and then we could be together."

"That's not what I said." Clarke took a step away from him, managing to pull her arm from his grasp. "I never said that, Finn. I said before I would even think about anything like that, you needed to tell her. But now I'm telling you that, now that I've had more time to think, I just really don't want this. Want you. I'm sorry."

Finn shook his head. "Okay, Clarke," he said. "But... you'll change your mind. When you do, you know where to find me." 

Clarke kept her eye on him as she headed for the stairs, not wanting to stand and wait for the elevator. She couldn't put distance between them fast enough.


	32. Lexa

Lexa was about to put her headphones in when a single word made her hesitate.

"Stop."

It wasn't directed at her. It wasn't even anyone near her. The voice had come from the floor above, the sound making its way down the stairs since the second floor was partially open to the first in the big building that housed several of the school offices, the bookstore, the dining hall, and one of the dorms. Anya had asked her to drop a packet off for her in one of the offices, and given the fact that she owed Anya more than a few favors at this point, she'd agreed to the errand. Now she was contemplating whether to go home or to stick around until Anya was done so she could get a ride. 

The voice – whoever it belonged to – wasn't necessarily pitched to carry, but it did. It wasn't the volume that caught Lexa's attention, though. It was the tone. That 'stop' wasn't said in the way that someone might when they were being teased and they told the person to stop, but secretly didn't really want them to. It wasn't one of false modesty. It was the tone of someone who wanted someone to cease whatever they were doing _immediately_ , and preferably fuck directly off.

She looked up and saw two people standing near the railing of the balcony. One was a girl – average size, blonde – and the other was a guy who had several inches on her, probably ten pounds or more, likely some muscle, and who was seriously invading her personal space.

"Stop," she said again, and Lexa saw her put her hands up to try to push him away, but he just grabbed them, holding them against his chest like she meant it as some kind of gesture of affection and not the precursor to a shove. 

"Damn it," she muttered, and bounded up the stairs, taking them two at a time. She dodged past a group of people exiting the dining hall and made her way over to where the couple was tangled. "There you are," she said, going straight to the girl as if she knew her. "I thought we were meeting downstairs."

The girl turned to look at her, and Lexa's insides went cold. She _did_ know her. _Clarke._ It was all she could do not to shove the guy away from her herself, and make sure he regretted ever laying a hand on her. 

Clarke looked at her blankly, and for a second Lexa worried that she wouldn't figure it out, wouldn't play along. Unless maybe she was misinterpreting the entire situation, but it didn't feel to her like there was much room for interpretation. It seemed pretty clear-cut: this guy was an asshole creeping on Clarke, and she wanted no part of it.

"For the project?" she prompted, silently begging for Clarke to pick it up. "Do I have the day wrong?"

"No," Clarke said finally. "No, you don't. I thought we'd said upstairs. Sorry."

"No problem," Lexa said. "We found each other." She looked at the guy who was looking back and forth between them, bewildered. Not too bright, then. "Sorry to just butt in," she said, although she wasn't sorry at all, and she was pretty sure that it was clear from her face that she wasn't. "We have a lot to get done and not a lot of time. Hope you don't mind."

"No," he said, forcing a smile. "No, I don't mind." He turned the smile on Clarke, and brought one of her hands to his lips, kissing the knuckles. If it had been Lexa in Clarke's position, she would have taken the opportunity to punch him, but Clarke just let it happen, shoving her hands into her pockets as soon as they were released. "I'll see you later," he said.

Lexa took Clarke's elbow, not wanting to force any more unwanted contact on her but at the same time wanting to have a grip on her in case he suddenly tried something again, so that she could pull her back and out of the way. When he was finally out of sight, she let go. "Are you okay?"

Clarke just stared at her, then finally nodded. "Yes. Thank you."

Lexa shrugged, uncomfortable with gratitude she didn't feel as if she'd done anything to earn. "I heard you, and then saw him pushing you against the railing, and I just..." Her shoulders lifted and fell again. "I wasn't about to let him get away with treating you like that. Or anyone." Because when she'd come up the stairs, she hadn't known who it was. She would have done the same for any girl.

"He's just..." But Clarke didn't seem to have any explanation for what he was just like, and Lexa was glad, because she really wasn't in the mood to listen to someone make excuses for some fuckboy who thought that he had the right to touch anyone after they'd told him to stop.

"Are you hungry?" Lexa asked.

"Not really," Clarke said. "Not after that." 

Lexa grimaced in sympathy. She knew that feeling – the aftermath of the adrenaline rush, the queasiness that came on its heels. "Should you eat anyway?"

"Probably," Clarke said. 

"Let's go in, then," she said, nodding toward the dining hall. "Unless there's somewhere you'd rather go."

Clarke finally looked at her then, really looked at her. "You don't have to stay with me," she said. "I'm sure you have better things to do."

"I don't, actually," Lexa said. "I'm waiting for Anya. I don't feel like walking."

"Are you sure?"

"Didn't I tell you that I don't say things that I don't mean?"

Clarke smiled then, a bit crookedly and it didn't reach her eyes, but it was at least an attempt. "Yeah, you did."

"Well then." 

Lexa waited for Clarke to go into the dining hall, and was reaching for her wallet when she saw that Clarke had had the attendant deduct the cost of the meal from her own balance. "You didn't have to do that," she said as they found a booth and set down their things. 

"It's the least I can do," Clarke said. "Consider it a thank you."

"You already thanked me. Which you didn't have to do, either."

"I'm being polite," Clarke said. "Go with it." 

"Do you always do what's polite?" Lexa asked. 

"Not always," Clarke said. "But usually." 

They went and got food, and it was the same stuff that Lexa remembered from the year before – not bad but not really good, and maybe she should have suggested that they go somewhere else, but that would have cost money, and she wasn't broke but she wasn't rich, either. 

"Are you saying that you're not polite?" Clarke said. "Because you could have told Finn to back the fuck off, but instead you made up a story to explain why you were sending him away."

"That's not politeness," Lexa said. "That's self-preservation. Why have a confrontation with someone that can be avoided?"

"You don't seem like the kind of person who avoids confrontation," Clarke said. "You seem like the kind of person that faces things head-on."

Lexa shrugged again, realizing it was becoming a habit, and one she needed to break if she didn't want to seem uncertain or uncomfortable. "I do things in the way that seems to make the most sense. If that's confrontation, so be it. But if I'd come in and pushed him away from you, there would have been a fight, and I might have ended up in trouble, and it might not have actually gotten him to leave you alone."

"For now," Clarke said, and her voice had gone soft, sounding weary.

"Who is he?" Lexa asked. "Your boyfriend?" Her stomach clenched, dreading the answer, because if Clarke said yes, that meant that it would be harder, first of all, to convince her that this guy – Finn – was an asshole and she would be better off steering clear, ands second, it meant that Clarke wasn't the girl that Lexa thought she was.

Not that she had any real basis for her ideas about Clarke. She'd met her once, briefly. And it wasn't like girls who ended up in abusive relationships fit some kind of mold. But it seemed to her that girls who would barge into the rooms of strangers and not be put off by the surliness of the inhabitant ought to have enough pride, backbone, whatever you wanted to call it, to not let herself get sucked into a situation like that.

"No," Clarke said. "But he wants to be."

"And you turned him down." It wasn't really a question.

"Yes," Clarke said. "It's... complicated."

"It's not, though," Lexa said. "No means no. There is nothing simpler than that."

Clarke looked at her. "You know it's not that easy. It should be, but it's not." 

Lexa pursed her lips. "If you told him that you're not interested, and he's still coming after you, then that's... stalking, or something. By law, I don't know where that would fall, but if you'd told him to stay away from you, then that's what he needs to do."

"I didn't," Clarke said. "I didn't tell him to stay away from me. I just told him that I didn't want to date him. But he's convinced that we're meant for each other. He thinks that it was fate that made me ask him if I could crash with him on Christmas and that now I'm just fighting the inevitable by saying no. He thinks he can wear me down, I guess."

"You can't," Lexa said. "You can't let him."

"I don't plan to," Clarke said. "I just don't know how to get him to get it through his head that I'm not going to change my mind. Not after..." She stopped, frowned, shook her head. "It's just not going to happen."

"Tell him," Lexa said. "As unambiguously as possible, tell him that you aren't interested in him, that you don't want to go out with him, and that's not going to change. Ever."

Clarke scowled. "Do you think I haven't tried that? Do you think that I _like_ having him follow me around, turning up wherever I am?" 

"That's stalking," Lexa said. "If you have to, report it to the campus police. Or better, the real police." But even as she said the words, she knew that it might not do any good. They might not take it seriously. They might not even listen. 

"I just don't want to make any waves," Clarke said. "He's friends with Octavia's brother. It would be a mess if Bellamy were to take his side."

"If he takes Finn's side, then he's an asshole and not worth your time," Lexa said. It all seemed simple to her, but she wasn't the one in the middle of it. People were messy – which was part of the reason that she avoided spending too much time with them these days. She didn't want to get involved in that human mess again. 

"I wish it was that simple," Clarke said. "I wish I could go back and just... do it all over again, but differently."

"There is no going back," Lexa said. "Only forward."

"Thanks, Yoda," Clarke said. 

"That's, 'Do or do not. There is no try.'"

"Wow." Clarke looked at her, and there was that hint of a smile, but this one made it a little further. "I never would have taken you for a nerd."

"There is much you don't know about me," Lexa said, meaning it as a joke, because she hadn't gotten Clarke out of hard place just to pin her against conversational rocks.

"Are you going to let me find out, then?"

_Shit._ She'd walked straight into that, and she'd maybe even known, deep down, that she was doing it, but now she was stuck having to respond. "Maybe," she said, because most people took it to mean no. "If you play your cards right."

"I've always been good at cards," Clarke said. 

"I guess we'll see, won't we?" Lexa asked, trying to keep her tone neutral even as she felt her body break into a cold sweat, and the flush with heat at the smirk that curved Clarke's lips when she replied.

"I guess we will."


	33. Clarke

_A riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma._

That's what this girl was, or what she tried to be, or what she wanted to appear as. She hid herself behind walls, behind masks, trying to appear as if there was nothing going on inside her, nothing that anyone could touch, nothing that mattered to her.

Clarke had tried that once, right after her father died. She'd tried not feeling, because it hurt too much to feel, but it hadn't worked. It hadn't lasted. She was incapable of not caring, no matter how hard she tried. Maybe that was why she was still tangled up with Finn. He had helped her out once, and now he was proving himself to be maybe not the nice guy that she'd always thought, but didn't that just mean that he was more in need of help? Her help?

Instead, she'd ended up with this girl, a near stranger, coming to her rescue. 

"So," Clarke said. "I know you're going to deny it – secret identities to be kept and all – but are you some kind of superhero? Defending women from men who don't know how to take no for an answer? First Octavia, now me. It's kind of a pattern." 

She meant it as a joke, mostly, and her tone was light, a smile teasing at the corners of her mouth. But Lexa just looked at her, wide green eyes boring into her like she was trying to read the contents of her head, or her soul. "I am not a hero."

"Like I said, I knew you would have to deny it." She meant it to be a tease, but she could see the walls going up further, her expression darkening, and she immediately regretted it. But she tried again anyway, because she didn't know how to just talk like a normal person, apparently. "Did you have to exchange your ability to smile for your super powers?"

There was a long pause, and for a moment Clarke thought that Lexa was just going to get up and leave. From the way that her weight shifted, the way her hands rested on the edge of the table, it looked like for a moment Lexa might have been thinking she was going to get up and leave, too. But she didn't.

"You could say that," Lexa said. 

"So you're admitting that you do have super powers?" Clarke asked. "I'm not a journalism major or anything, but I could do my best Lois Lane impression if necessary."

No smile. Not even a flicker. Clarke knew that she wasn't actually a super hero, because they didn't exist, but there was something that drove her. There was something in her tragic backstory that made her do the things that she did, that made her care when she obviously didn't want to.

"What _is_ your major?" Lexa asked.

The question threw Clarke off, because usually when you met someone new in college that was among the first few questions that was asked: what's your name, where are you from, what's your major? It was like the freshman equivalent of 'what's your sign?' and probably a better predictor of compatibility than astrology would ever be. 

"Pre-med," Clarke said. "What's yours?"

"I don't know," Lexa said. 

Clarke's eyebrows went up. She hadn't been expecting that. Lexa seemed like the type of person who always had a plan, who had things all figured out and probably had for years. She was... not a control freak, but the kind of person who wanted order. The kind of person who didn't like mess. Like Anya, or at least like what Clarke knew of Anya, and it felt like it made perfect sense that they were roommates. So to hear that Lexa didn't know what she was majoring in, especially given the fact that she was a second semester sophomore, surprised her. "Don't you have to declare soon?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "I've already declared."

"You just said you didn't know."

"I'm thinking of changing my major." And there was something searching in her eyes, like she was looking to Clarke... not necessarily for approval, but for some kind of reaction, like she was testing the waters with the statement, wanting to see if anything came out of the deep to attack her. 

"From what to what?" Clarke asked.

"International relations to law."

Clarke whistled. "That sounds like an out of the frying pan, into the fire kind of change. Both sound pretty intense."

"They are," Lexa said, in a tone that made it clear that she could handle it. Clarke had no doubt that she could handle anything that was thrown at her, and juggle it all with ease. Or maybe that was just what Lexa wanted her to believe. Because behind this mask of invulnerability was the girl who had come home to find a bunch of people in her house, and who had tried to turn around and leave again, who had hidden in her room and when coaxed out, had retreated again as soon as she was given the opportunity. Maybe she was just an introvert, and found dealing with strangers, especially large groups of strangers, exhausting. Maybe she'd already had a rough day at that point. Or maybe there was something more, something Clarke wasn't allowed to see. Something no one was allowed to see, except maybe Anya.

And maybe that was where she ought to go for more information. But why was she even thinking about that, when she had Lexa herself right in front of her, and could get information straight from the source? 

"Why are you thinking about changing?" Clarke asked. 

"Because... because of reasons," Lexa said. 

Clarke laughed, even though Lexa had said it with an absolutely straight face. "Have you ever seen the whole cartoon that that comes from?" she asked. She wasn't sure why she found it so surprising that Lexa spent enough time on the internet – on social media, specifically – to have picked up on that particular phrase, but it did. Which just made her want to know more, made her want to get behind those walls and figure out who she _really_ was.

"No," Lexa said. 

"Oh." Clarke pulled out her phone and did a quick search. "You have to see it. Because what makes it all funnier is that _that _is the panel that people have latched on to, and not any of the rest of it."__

__She handed her phone across the table to Lexa, who took it gingerly, like Clarke might be handing her a bomb or something. Like she didn't quite trust her to not be trying to pull something. Her eyes lingered on Clarke for a second, long enough that it almost made Clarke look away, before turning her attention to the screen._ _

__And there it was. A widening of the eyes, and then a tipping of the lips, and it was faint, but it was there. A smile, and a sound that might almost have been a laugh. She looked up again, and there was a brightness to her eyes, a warmth that Clarke hadn't seen before (in her admittedly short acquaintance with the girl) and it felt like a victory. She offered the phone back. "I need this because of reasons," she said._ _

__Their hands brushed as Clarke reached for her phone, and although she wasn't actually zapped with a jolt of static electricity, it almost felt like she was. They both pulled back quickly, and Clarke's phone nearly got dropped in the process. They just stared at each other for a second, and then as if they'd planned it, or made some kind of agreement, turned their attention to finishing their food._ _

__"I should go," Lexa said a little while later. They'd fallen into silence, but it wasn't awkward or uncomfortable. It honestly was the most peaceful Clarke had felt in days, since Finn had started getting all weird and clingy and turning up everywhere she was, whether they'd agreed to meet or not (because they hadn't agreed to meet, ever). "Anya's class is almost over."_ _

__"I should probably get home," Clarke said. Even though she worried that Finn would somehow be waiting for her there. She'd told Octavia – not everything, but enough – so she knew that her roommate wouldn't sign him in to the dorm to surprise her, but that wouldn't stop him from waiting outside._ _

__"Do you want me to walk with you?" Lexa asked._ _

__"I thought you just said that Anya's class was getting out."_ _

__"She will wait," Lexa said. "Or I can walk."_ _

__"No," Clarke said. "That's okay. I'll be fine."_ _

__Lexa looked at her, studying her face as if searching for the truth behind her words. From the narrowing of her eyes, she knew that Clarke was lying, or at least knew that Clarke was potentially lying (and knew it). She reached into her bag and pulled out a small notebook and a pen, and carefully wrote something in it, then tore out the page, folded it in half, and handed it to Clarke._ _

__Clarke opened it. "Your handwriting is perfect," she said, because she didn't know how else to respond to being given Lexa's phone number. "It looks like a font."_ _

__"They teach a different writing system in Europe than in America," Lexa said. "I like it better."_ _

__"Is that where you grew up?" Clarke asked, suddenly not wanting her to go. Or not so suddenly, but now she had something else to talk about, another piece of the puzzle, another clue to the mystery of Lexa._ _

__"Some of the time," Lexa said._ _

__"Where else did you grow up?" Clarke asked._ _

__Lexa looked at her, and that stare was unnerving, because it really felt like she had some kind of x-ray vision, but she wasn't looking at Clarke's bones with it. She was seeing something deeper, and Clarke wasn't sure she wanted it to be seen, but then she wasn't sure she didn't, either. "That's a story for another day, I think," Lexa said. "If you need me, call me."_ _

__"I—" But Clarke didn't know what she meant to say._ _

__"Don't just put it in your phone, either," Lexa said. "Keep that paper somewhere where it won't get lost." _Or stolen,_ was the unspoken part of that, and it made Clarke wonder again what Lexa had been through to make her this way. She seemed to recognize some of Finn's behavior somehow, and it felt like she was trying – for whatever reason – to stay ahead of it, and to help Clarke stay ahead of it as well._ _

__"Okay," Clarke said. "Thank you."_ _

__"Don't thank me," Lexa said, standing up and pulling her bag onto her shoulder. "Just call me if you need me. For anything."_ _

__"Okay," Clarke repeated. "I will."_ _

__Lexa looked at her for another long moment, and for a second Clarke thought she might actually reach out and touch her, might squeeze her shoulder or even hug her, and she wasn't sure if she wanted her to, but she wasn't sure she didn't want her to, either. But it didn't happen, and then, with one quick backward glance, she was gone._ _


	34. Lexa

They ate dinner late, because Anya had gotten caught up in things at school, and Lexa had ended up just sitting around her tiny shared office (because yes, TAs were expected to keep office hours just like professors were, except without really getting paid for it) while she did what she needed to do. She had spent the time doing reading for class and regretting the fact that she hadn't texted Anya first, because if she had she would have known that she didn't need to leave Clarke quite so soon. At the very least, she could have walked her back to her dorm and made sure that there was someone else there to be with her. 

Not that she didn't think Clarke could handle herself, exactly. She just wasn't completely convinced that Clarke realized that there was a situation that needed to be handled. Obviously she knew that something wasn't quite right with what Finn was doing, but did she understand that it was, or could be, serious? That there was a possibility that he might turn on her if she kept refusing? Lexa had seen it enough times to know the road that this could be going down, unless Finn finally got a clue and realized that he was being an asshole, but in her experience that rarely, if ever, happened. In his own head, his behavior was completely justified. 

It didn't help that the media and society backed him up. It didn't help that somewhere along the line children went from being little human beings to being Boys and Girls, and Girls were taught that if a guy showed violent, controlling tendencies it just meant that he liked you, and Boys were taught to never accept no for an answer, and if a girl says no, she's just playing hard to get and to try harder, because eventually she would give in. And if she was only giving in because she feared that you would turn violent if she didn't, well, so what, right?

"Has anyone ever told you that you have a head filled with useless facts?" Lexa asked, after losing at Jeopardy to Anya... again. (She almost always did, although occasionally she could come out on top if the categories worked in her favor.) 

"Once or twice," Anya said. "More often lately, because someone in a sore loser." She grinned at Lexa, and nudged her when she didn't smile back. "I'm only teasing."

"It's not that," Lexa said. 

Anya must have seen something in her face, or heard it in her voice, because as Wheel of Fortune started she turned to give Lexa her full attention. "What is it?"

"I'm worried about Clarke."

"Clarke?" Anya's forehead furrowed. "My student Clarke?" Lexa nodded. "Why?"

"She's..." Lexa pursed her lips. She didn't want to overstate the situation, but she didn't want to make it seem like it wasn't anything, either. "There is a boy that is interested in her, who she has turned down, but he won't accept that," she said finally. "I can't say that he's stalking her, exactly... but I would hesitate to rule it out entirely."

Anya let out a slow breath. "That's serious," she said. "Did Clarke... say something to you about it?"

"Yes," Lexa said, "but only after I saw it."

"What did you see?"

"He had her basically pinned against the railing outside the dining hall, and I don't know what he was saying to her, or doing – other than not letting her walk away – but I heard her say stop more than once, and that's when I got involved."

"What did you do?" Anya asked, and there was fear in her voice. 

"Nothing like that," Lexa said, because she knew what Anya was thinking. She guessed maybe it wasn't without reason, after what had happened on New Year's Eve with Octavia's attacker. "I just came up to her acting as if I'd been looking for her, because we were supposed to meet up to work on a project. It got him to go away, at least for a little while."

"And Clarke played along?"

"Yes. At first she looked at me like she had no idea what I was talking about – because of course she had no idea what I was talking about – but then she caught on. I gave her an out – asked if I'd gotten the day wrong, figuring that if she said that I had, it meant that she was okay and I could walk away, but she didn't. When we went in to eat, she told me that she... well, she implied that there had been something between them, maybe, briefly, but now she wasn't interested anymore and he wouldn't let go. Said that he thought they were meant to be together."

Anya cringed. "Why do people get so screwed up over stuff like this?" she asked. "I know I'm not the most understanding person when it comes to relationship stuff, because I just don't get it on some kind of fundamental level, but... but most people understand that when someone isn't interested, they're not interested, and nothing is going to change that, except maybe time. But not tomorrow or next week. Like you run into the person months or years later and you've both changed. Or whatever."

"And sometimes not even then," Lexa said. "But as to why – I don't know. I'm not sure it matters. I just want to make sure that she's safe."

"And you want my help."

Lexa shrugged. "I want you to be aware. You see her more often than I do, although I did give her my number, told her to call if she needs anything. And she knows that I don't say things that I don't mean." She frowned, her eyes narrowing. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" Anya asked. "I'm not looking at you like anything."

"You are," Lexa said. "You're almost... smirking."

"I'm definitely not smirking," Anya said. "I'm just glad to see you actually... interacting. With people other than me."

Lexa sighed. "I could see – hear – that she was upset. I wasn't just going to ignore it. I didn't even realize it was Clarke at first. It was just some girl who was possibly in a situation she didn't know how to get out of, and I thought that I might be able to help."

"Okay," Anya said. It was obvious that she wanted to say more, or at least that she was thinking more, but she didn't say it, and Lexa wasn't about to try to drag it out of her. She was sure she didn't want to hear it anyway. If it made Anya happy that she was talking to people, fine. Good for her. It didn't mean anything. 

And anyway, wasn't it Anya who had forced her to recite the meaning of black belt, reminding her that it didn't only apply to when she was in the dojang? At the time, she'd been using it as a caution against going violently overboard no matter how much someone deserved it. Now Lexa was focused on the bit about helping other people in need.

"So will you keep an eye on her?" Lexa asked. 

"Yes," Anya said. "I'll keep an eye out. Although if he's trying to get her away from people – catch her while she's alone – it's unlikely anything would happen before or after my class, since she's got Octavia and Raven in there with her."

Lexa frowned. "You never know."

"You're right, you don't. And I'll see if there's some way I can subtly let her know that if she needs anything outside of class, not related to class, she can come to me, too."

"Thank you." That was what Lexa had been hoping to hear when she'd brought it up. She wanted another set of eyes and ears that could be at least a little bit impartial, a little bit outside the situation. Going to Octavia and Raven, and any of Clarke's other friends might not work as well, because they might know Finn, and might be more willing to excuse his behavior. Anya wouldn't, and she would know what to do if things got bad.

"For all that you said you only did it for the free room and board, you were always a good RA," Lexa added. "You didn't want to, maybe, but you cared."

"I cared about you," Anya said. "And some of the others. A lot of them... I couldn't have cared less. They would come to me with their petty squabbles and it was all I could do not to just bang their heads together and tell them to grow up, for fuck's sake." She grinned, but it only lasted a second. "You... I understood you. I knew where you were coming from. Not the specifics, maybe, but the idea. You were a little – and sometimes a lot – like me. And you didn't want me to care, and you know I like a challenge."

Lexa rolled her eyes. "Well, you got one." But then it wasn't funny anymore. It wasn't a joke. Anya had gotten more of a challenge than she had probably ever bargained for, after she was officially under no obligation to get involved. And yet she had, and still was. 

"Like I said. I get you. You get me. I know that if I needed you, you would always have my back. No questions."

Lexa wasn't so sure that that was true... or at least she wasn't sure that it would have been a month ago. Now, maybe... Maybe. Maybe not. How could Anya rely on her when sometimes she wasn't sure that she could rely on herself? 

But again today, she'd felt... almost normal. Almost like a whole, functional person, and not half of a whole that was broken, hollow, gutted. When Clarke had finally caught on to what she was doing, when she'd gone along with the ruse, it had given her a feeling of pride and purpose that had been missing for a long time. And talking with her... it had been easy. Mostly easy. It hadn't been full of traps and landmines that she wasn't sure how to navigate.

Because Clarke didn't know. She didn't know _her_ , didn't even know _about_ her, and that meant that Lexa could just be Lexa, and not what was left behind when a whole got split into its component pieces and found itself useless and lacking.

She wasn't useless. Even if Clarke never called, she'd at least put it out there. She'd at least made the offer. That was something, right? 

And maybe if she was lucky it might even be, at least for a little while, enough.


	35. Clarke

"You'll be okay without me?" Octavia had asked, but it hadn't really been a question. Her bags were already packed, and Bellamy was waiting in their shared car (which he hardly ever shared, claiming that Octavia was a terrifying driver and that she couldn't be trusted with it, to which Octavia always responded that he had no one to blame but himself for that, because who had taught her to drive?) to take her home. She hadn't gone into details, but something was going on with her mom or the house or something, and they needed to be there. "I'll be back Sunday," she'd said. "If you need anything, just call, okay? And you can always hang out with Raven."

And then she'd been gone, and Clarke had been left staring at the door. 

Which she was doing now. Not still, but again. She'd made it through the first night, and had gone to brunch and back without incident. She'd done all of her reading and even gotten started on a paper that was due in two weeks. Now she was bored, and she wanted to go out... and she was afraid.

It wasn't Octavia's fault that she'd left. Clarke was pretty sure her roommate wasn't having any more fun than she was, and possibly less. She had almost offered to go along, but she knew that Octavia was a little bit sensitive about people seeing her mom on her bad days, and also her mom might not have reacted well to having a sudden visitor. If she'd gone, she might have made whatever was going on worse. So she'd kept her mouth shut.

Just like she'd kept her mouth shut about what had happened the other day at the dining hall, and the fact that pretty much everywhere she was, he turned up, usually sooner than later. He'd learned her schedule and would find her before or after class, almost without fail, or he would suddenly appear at her side when she was walking from one place to another. And he was always friendly. He didn't grab her or try to corner her again, but... but he was always there. Sometimes she thought she saw him out of the corner of her eye, watching her without approaching, and that was even creepier than the appearing out of thin air act. Probably because he did that when she was with other people. He only approached when she was alone.

If he just wanted to be friends, wouldn't he come around even when she was with her other friends? Maybe not Raven... maybe he realized that would be awkward, but Octavia? She was Bellamy's sister, and Bellamy was his friend, his brother. Why should he stay away just because Octavia was around? It didn't make sense.

None of it made sense, really, when she thought about it. She didn't have low self-esteem or anything; she thought she actually had a pretty positive self-image. But she didn't understand what it was about her that he was so stuck on, so obsessed with. Was it just the fact that she had turned him down, and that made him want her more? 

She started trying to find different paths to take to get herself from point A to point B, sometimes going pretty far out of her way just to try and dodge him, but somehow he always figured it out, and it never seemed to take long. He joked one day that he was starting to think that she was avoiding him, except the look in his eyes told her that it wasn't a joke at all, that he didn't think it was funny, that he was upset by it... or angry. 

She hadn't known how to respond, so she'd just laughed and shook her head, and changed the subject, all the while the voice in her head that said all the things she wasn't allowed to screaming, _I wouldn't have to avoid you if you would just stop following me!_

She was starting to feel like a prisoner, and maybe Lexa was right. Maybe he was actually stalking her. It was an ugly word, but what he was doing made her feel ugly inside, and even if Lexa hadn't used that word – had she? Clarke couldn't remember – she had strongly implied it. 

Clarke reached into her pocket and pulled out the paper with her phone number on it, the paper creased and wrinkled from being in her pocket for days on end. She'd programmed the number into her phone, but she'd kept the paper anyway, and sometimes she found herself reaching into her pocket to reassure herself that it was still there. It had become almost like a talisman, a charm of protection. 

She picked up her phone, scrolled through the contacts, down to Lexa's name. Then, before she could actually touch it, she scrolled back up and tapped on Raven's instead. 

"Hello?" The voice on the other hand was muffled, and there was sounds of shifting and rustling. "Clarke?"

"Yeah, hey," Clarke said. "How are you?"

Raven groaned. "I've been better. I was at the stupid hospital all damn day."

Clarke's stomach instantly knotted. "What? What happened?" If it was bad she would probably still be there, right? She wouldn't be saying it like it was past tense. 

"Oh no," Raven said with a soft laugh. "No, nothing like that. It was routine stuff. It just sucks, and now I'm exhausted and my big Saturday night plans are to eat too much pizza when it gets here and pass out. My exciting life, right?"

"Yeah," Clarke agreed. "Well, at least you're getting pizza?"

"Yeah. What are you and Octavia doing?"

"Nothing," Clarke said. "I mean, Octavia had to go home for the weekend, so it's just me. I don't have any plans."

"I would invite you over, but I am going to be seriously epically lame tonight."

"It's okay," Clarke said. "Just rest. I hope you feel better in the morning."

"I won't," Raven said. "But thanks."

The phone clicked off, and Clarke was left staring at it, and at the slip of paper that she was still holding. Her hands were cold, her stomach fluttering, and why the hell was she so nervous? Lexa had told her to call her if she needed anything, right? 

But there were limits to 'anything', Clarke was pretty sure. She'd meant if she needed any help with Finn. She hadn't meant... just going out. Hanging out. Doing the things that friends do on a Saturday night. Because they weren't friends. They were just... two people who had talked a few times. Right? Acquaintances. Maybe they would say hello to each other if they passed each other in a hall, or on the street, but they wouldn't stop to talk.

But she'd said _anything_ , and this was Finn-related anyway, wasn't it? If it wasn't for Finn, she wouldn't be afraid to go out by herself. If it wasn't for Finn, she would just go see a movie or something, all by herself. But if she tried that now, she was afraid that he would follow her, and suddenly there he would be in the seat next to her, offering his popcorn. 

She took a deep breath and pushed the button. It started to ring and she immediately ended the call, because what was she going to say? She wasn't in danger. This wasn't a crisis. She put the phone down, picked it back up, put it down again. 

She could always just watch a movie on her laptop. Order in pizza. Maybe Raven's plan wasn't such a bad one. But the walls felt like they were closing in, and the room was too warm and she just wanted – needed – air. 

She went to the window, opened it a crack, felt a cold breeze seep in. She drew it into her lungs, exhaling slowly once, then again, trying to ease the tightness in her chest. She closed her eyes, shutting everything out but the expansion and contraction of her lungs. 

Then her phone rang, and she jumped, her heart feeling like it was pounding against her ribs. She grabbed it, looked at the screen. Lexa.

Lexa?

Why was Lexa calling her?

"Hello?"

"Hey. You... called me?" The first word was pure relief, and then her tone slid almost immediately into uncertainty, even though Clarke could tell she was trying to hide it. 

"I..." Clarke didn't know how to answer that, because the answer was yes, she had, but no, she hadn't meant to, except she had until she'd realized that it was a mistake. Could she say that? "Sorry," she said, because it was just simpler.

"Why?" Lexa asked. 

Because of course she did. Because nothing was ever easy with her... except talking to her in the dining hall had felt easier than talking to a lot of people, and the silence had been easier still. 

"I don't know," Clarke admitted.

"I thought maybe it was an accident," Lexa said. "That you'd dialed the wrong person, since you hung up right away. But then I thought... maybe you'd tried to call and someone had stopped you. I started to call back but I didn't want to make things worse, but then I realized I had no way of knowing what had happened unless I called, so..." 

"I'm okay," Clarke said. "I'm just in my room."

"Okay," Lexa said. "I just... thought I should check. I'll leave you to it."

"You don't have to," Clarke blurted out, afraid suddenly that Lexa was going to hang up, and then there would be no way she could call her back without looking like an idiot. "I didn't dial you accidentally. I just... wasn't sure how all-inclusive the offer of 'if you need anything' was."

"What do you need?" Lexa asked. Her tone was even, but there was an edge to it, a wariness that came from knowing you were about to be asked for something and not being sure it would be something you were willing to give, except you'd already kind of offered.

"I need to not be in this room," Clarke said. "I need to get out. Octavia is home for the weekend and Raven is beat, and—" She stopped herself, realizing how bad that sounded. "Not that you're my third choice. That's not—"

"That's exactly what you're saying," Lexa said, but now she sounded almost amused. "I'm not offended. We barely know each other. Did you have something in mind?"

"The movies, maybe?" Clarke said. "Just... anything to get out. Maybe something to eat."

There was a pause that stretched a little too long on the other end, and just as Clarke was about to tell her to forget about it, Lexa said, "Okay. Do you want to meet there, or do you want me to come get you? Assuming Anya will let me borrow her car."

"I can get you," Clarke said. "If you want."

"Meet me there," Lexa said. "What time?"

"Half an hour?" They could figure out what was playing soon when they got there.

"I'll see you then." 

A soft click, and she was gone, and it was only as she was getting ready that Clarke realized that despite the fumbling awkwardness of the conversation, hearing that voice on the other end of the line had given her the first moment of true calm she'd felt all day.


	36. Lexa

Lexa pulled her jacket from the closet and shrugged it on. "Can I borrow your car?" she asked, like it was something she did all the time and not a big deal at all... even though she'd never asked to borrow anything from Anya, and certainly not her car. 

Anya looked up from the papers that she was reading, rubbing the bridge of her nose like she had developed a headache right between her eyes. "What?"

"I asked if I could borrow your car," Lexa said. "But I changed my mind. I'll walk."

"Walk where?" Anya asked. "Where are you going?" Her tone was sharp – frustration or annoyance – but Lexa was pretty sure the feelings weren't actually directed at her. 

She wanted to tell her it was none of her business, because it wasn't, but she also knew that at best it would leave Anya to worry when she looked like she was already ready to snap, at worst it would lead to an argument that they really didn't need to have. It wasn't like Anya was asking because she was going to try to tell her she couldn't go; she was just curious. Right? It was just a normal friend thing to ask where someone was going when they decided to head out unexpectedly on a Saturday night, when they hadn't left the house of their own volition for anything that wasn't actually critical to keeping up appearances as a functional human being. Right?

"Out," she said, then added, "to the movies."

"Oh. You can borrow the car if you want to. Keys are on the peg."

"No," Lexa said. "It's not that far. I think I'd rather walk. But... are you going to be around tonight?"

Anya rolled her eyes, holding up a sheaf of papers. "What do you think?"

"If I maybe needed a ride later...?"

"I'm sure I'll be more than ready to take a break. Go on. Call if you need a lift."

"Thanks." Lexa opened the door. "Don't work too hard." Anya just groaned. She went out into the hall, shutting the door behind her, pausing to put on a pair of boots. 

She was about to head down the stairs when the apartment door opened and Anya stuck her head out. "Alone?"

"What?"

"You're going to the movies alone?"

"No," Lexa said. "Not alone."

"But you don't—" Anya stopped herself. "Wow. That was almost really rude."

"What?"

"I just almost said, 'But you don't have any friends.'"

"Other than you," Lexa said.

"Other than me. But it's still rude for me to say something like that."

"Only if you think telling the truth is rude," Lexa said. 

"But you're not going alone, so obviously there's _someone_."

Lexa pursed her lips, wondering why she was suddenly so hesitant to admit who she was going out with. Not even going out... at least not in the sense that a lot of people would take that. They were just going somewhere together, which happened to be out. But not on a date. Even if they had kind of agreed to a movie and maybe dinner. Which was date-like.

_Shit._

"Are you okay?" Anya asked. "You just went pale all of a sudden."

Lexa swallowed, shook her head, trying to clear it. It wasn't like that. They barely knew each other, and she had been Clarke's third choice. Maybe not even third. Last choice, probably, and only because she'd offered herself if Clarke ever needed someone. 

"Lexa?" 

"Sorry," she finally managed to force out. "I just... head rush, I guess."

"Are you feeling okay?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "I'm fine."

"You got your flu shot, right? Do they give the same flu shot in Australia as here? Probably not, and it was going into summer for there, anyway. Do they even—" Anya stopped herself again. "It's going around."

"I got my shot," Lexa said. "You took me, remember?"

"Right." Anya came out and leaned against the door frame. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm _fine_ ," Lexa repeated, hoping if she said it enough times they would both believe it. "And to answer your question, yes, I'm going with someone. Clarke. Her friends are out of town or have other plans and she's going stir-crazy, so she called me."

Anya's eyebrows arched up, but she didn't say anything, and Lexa chose to ignore whatever she might be thinking. "Call me if you need a ride," she told her again. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Lexa just rolled her eyes and pushed open the outer door, heading out into what looked and felt like night even though it was barely evening. They'd agreed on half an hour, and Lexa had lost about ten minutes getting ready and talking to Anya, but the movie theater really wasn't that far away, so she wasn't worried about being late. It wasn't a big multiplex, but it had a few screens. She hoped that there would be something good to see, although she'd kind of gotten the feeling from Clarke that she didn't care what she saw as long as she got out. 

She waited outside for Clarke, her stomach fluttering with nerves, because what if she didn't show up? Would it just mean that she'd changed her mind or gotten a better offer? Or would it mean that something had happened to her? How bad were things with this Finn asshole? Had they gotten worse? Was Clarke's seeming paranoia justified? 

But then she saw a flash of blonde hair, and caught a glimpse of her face and she hadn't been stood up after all.

Not that that was the right term for it. Was it? A friend could get stood up by another friend. Or an acquaintance. Or whatever they were. 

"Hey," Clarke said, smiling at her. "I hope you haven't been waiting long."

"No," Lexa said. "Not long."

"Good. Did you check out what's playing? Anything you really want to see?"

"Not a romance," Lexa said. "Other than that, I don't really care." 

"Definitely not a romance," Clarke said. "I'm not sure I'm in the mood for whatever kids movie is out, although a lot of them are actually pretty good, so... maybe we shouldn't rule that out." She looked at the Now Playing posters, and they finally decided on something vaguely action-y – mindless but not _too_ mindless... they hoped. 

They passed on the popcorn and got candy instead, and then headed into the theater. "Please don't tell me you're a front row kind of person," Clarke said.

"No," Lexa said. "Back row, center. Always."

Clarke grinned. "Perfect." They climbed up to the top and found what appeared to be the middle, shifting over a seat in one direction, then the other, until they were as close to the center as possible. 

"It used to drive—" Lexa started to say, and then the words dried up on her tongue as she realized that she'd almost brought _her_ up in conversation, just casually, like she was just a friend she'd left behind in a move, and not... "My dad," she said instead, hoping Clarke would somehow miss the stumble. "It used to drive my dad crazy that I had to find the exact middle. He liked to be on the end of a row, in case he needed to get up." 

Not that they'd gone to the movies together often. Once a year, usually, on Christmas. If he didn't have to work. He'd always let her pick the movie, and she'd always noticed how annoyed he was by her choices, until she'd realized that it really didn't matter what she picked, because he was going to be annoyed by the whole thing no matter what.

"My dad always said that it was because I was an artist," Clarke said. "I had to have the best possible vantage point to take it in."

"Was?" Lexa asked.

"What?" Clarke looked up from opening her gummy bears, offering the bag to Lexa. "Oh. I guess it's not past tense, although I don't have a lot of time for it these days. Or when I have time, I don't have any inspiration." 

Lexa nodded, taking one of the green ones, because everyone always liked the green ones least, right? Although with gummy bears – at least these gummy bears – the green ones were strawberry so that didn't make a lot of sense. But she didn't want to take one of Clarke's favorites.

"You can have as many as you want," Clarke said, setting them in the cup holder of the arm between them. 

"Thanks," Lexa said, offering her the giant pack of Twizzlers that she'd chosen. She would have gotten gummy bears, but it had seemed a little weird to get the same thing that Clarke did, and Twizzlers were okay.

By the time the lights dimmed, only a few more people had joined them in the theater, and Clarke leaned in to whisper, "Do you think everyone who picked other movies knows something we don't?"

Lexa glanced at her, not sure if she was joking, and saw that she was smiling. She forced a smile back, shrugging, and they settled in to watch what turned out to be quite possibly the most boring movie ever... or would have been if she hadn't had Clarke in her ear the entire time, mocking the dialogue and predicting ever wilder plot twists that would have made the whole thing a lot more interesting if they had happened. 

When the credits rolled, Clarke stretched. "Well, that's two hours of my life I'll never get back," she said. "But at least I got to leave my dorm room."

"Did you see him?" Lexa asked. "When you left?" She instantly regretted it, because she felt Clarke tense, and the smile fell from her face. Sure, she'd been complaining, but it had been good-natured. Now she was on edge again. 

"No," Clarke said. "I'm probably just being paranoid."

"Go with your gut," Lexa said. "If something feels off to you, it probably is."

Clarke paused in the middle of putting on her coat, just looking at her. "Thank you," she said, her voice soft.

"For what?"

"For taking me seriously. For not telling me it's all in my head."

"I saw him, remember?"

"So did plenty of other people," Clarke said. "But they all looked the other way. You didn't."

"That's not who I am," Lexa said. 

"I get that," Clarke said. "But thank you. For not being that way. For being... you, I guess."

Lexa felt her cheeks going hot, and was glad that the theater was still relatively dim. She wasn't sure she'd ever been thanked for being herself before... and certainly not this version of herself, who was... a shadow of who she once was? A dark reflection? A specter? She didn't know. Not herself, at least not her whole self. She cleared her throat. "Are you hungry?"

"Yes," Clarke said. "I didn't eat lunch, because I had breakfast – brunch – so late. I'm starving."

"Where do you want to go?"

"I picked the movie," Clarke said, her smile flickering back to life. "We see how that turned out. I'll let you pick where we eat."

She looked away, trying to think of somewhere that wouldn't be packed with people they might know... or a minefield of memories. She ran down a mental list of places nearby and finally found one that fit the bill. She looked back at Clarke. "I know just the place. Come on."


	37. Clarke

The minute they stepped into the restaurant, Clarke's stomach started to growl. There was a rich, spicy smell that permeated the place, and the décor told her that Lexa had decided on Indian. One of the waiters approached and at Lexa's indication that there were two of them, led them to a little booth off to one side. Clarke immediately, almost unconsciously, positioned herself so that she would sit on the side of the booth that would allow her to have her elbow free, rather than possibly banging against the wall. Left-handed people problems, although she guessed right-handed people would have the same problem depending on where they sat. Since they were opposites, everyone ended up happy.

"I've never had Indian before," Clarke said. "My dad... it gave him indigestion or something, he said. He was a wimp when it came to spice."

"It's not all very spicy," Lexa said, "and you can ask them to make it mild, although some dishes are easier to make mild than others." 

"You'll have to tell me what's good," Clarke said, looking at her across the table. 

"Do you want meat, or vegetarian?" Lexa asked.

"Are you a veg—" Clarke started, then remembered Lexa eating chicken when she'd been there for dinner. "Never mind." She rolled her eyes at herself. 

"I'm not," Lexa said, treating it as if it wasn't a stupid question. "But a lot of the things that I like here are."

"Why don't you just order the things that you like, and then I can try them and see what I like?" Clarke suggested.

"Is there anything you absolutely can't stand?" Lexa asked, considering the options. 

"Cooked peppers," Clarke said, her face screwing up. "The smell, the texture..." She shuddered. 

Lexa laughed... or made a sound that was almost like a laugh. "All right. I'll avoid cooked peppers."

When the waiter came back, she ordered for both of them, and they handed their menus back... and that was when Clarke realized that going out to dinner with someone involved actually having to _talk_ to them. Someone new, at least. She and Octavia sometimes went out and spent most of the time waiting for their food staring at their phones, lost in their own little worlds, but that would be rude to do now, especially since she'd been the one who dragged Lexa out. And now she had no idea what to say to her.

"I'm sorry about the movie," she said finally. "That was really terrible."

"I would say it's not your fault, but you chose it," Lexa said, her tone dry, but Clarke thought she might mean it as a joke. "So I guess it is your fault."

"You went along with it," Clarke pointed out. "So you're just as much to blame."

"I'm not sure that's how it works," Lexa said. "Are those who follow the orders as culpable for the outcome as those who issued the orders in the first place?"

"Whoa," Clarke said, holding up her hands fingers spread. "We're only talking about a movie here, not military tactics."

For a second she thought Lexa actually looked embarrassed, before her face went almost blank again. Did she do that on purpose, or was that just what her resting face looked like? Clarke suspected it was the former, and that she had been practicing that look for a very long time. "Habit," she said, which was maybe an explanation or maybe an apology, or maybe both or neither. 

"It's okay," Clarke said. "Although I am forced to wonder how it is that going all philosophical like that at the dinner table got to be a habit."

"My father liked the sound of his own voice," Lexa said. "If there was something that I didn't want to talk about, I would bring up something like that, and he would go off on a rant for the rest of the meal, and I wouldn't have to say a word." 

"So... you don't want to talk about the movie?"

"No," Lexa said. "I guess I was trying to make a joke in the form of a semi-rhetorical question. Obviously I failed."

"It's hard to tell sometimes," Clarke said. _And by sometimes, I mean all the time._ "You always look so serious."

"Anya tells me that I'm not funny anyway," Lexa said. 

"Maybe her sense of humor just isn't as refined as yours," Clarke suggested. 

Lexa looked up from the napkin she'd been unfolding, then folding back up into some kind of shape. "You should tell her that," she said. 

"No thanks," Clarke said. "I like all of my limbs attached, thank you."

"She wouldn't hurt you," Lexa said. "Much." Her attention went back to the napkin.

"What are you doing?" Clarke asked. 

"You'll see," Lexa said. A minute later, the napkin had somehow been transformed into a (rather floppy, because the napkins were cloth, not paper, and not starched) bird. 

"Where did you learn to do that?" Clarke asked. 

"Japan," Lexa said.

Clarke blinked. "Is that part of the long story that you said you'd tell me sometime?" she asked. 

"It's not really that long a story," Lexa said. "My father was – is – in the military. The Air Force. When his orders changed, we moved. I've lived in a lot of different places. The entire time I was in school, I never spent an entire two years anywhere. I might start the year one place, and make it to the next year, but before the year was over we would be picking up and moving again."

"That's horrible," Clarke said. "How can you make friends like that? Or keep them?"

"You can't," Lexa said, "or you don't. You stop trying. You might make friends with the other kids on base, because you all understand how it goes, but mostly you don't form any kind of lasting connection with someone. Being here... it was strange coming back after being in Australia, because usually once I go to a place, I don't go back to the place I was before it."

"But obviously you stayed friends with Anya," Clarke said. 

"Anya is an Army brat," Lexa said. "So she gets it. But yes, I stayed friends with Anya."

"Does that make it less weird?" Clarke asked. "Having someone to... well, I guess to come home to, for lack of a better way to phrase it."

"No," Lexa said. "It makes it more weird. When I came back... I didn't actually tell her when my flight was getting in. I didn't want her to come meet me."

"Why not?" It didn't make sense to Clarke. Why would you not want your friend – roommate – to come meet you at the airport? Especially since, from the sound of it, she wasn't actually close with her family... wherever they were at this point.

"It's complicated," Lexa said, then rolled her eyes in response to Clarke's eyebrows going up. "Not like Facebook relationship status complicated," she said. "I just... I was ambivalent about coming back at all. I wanted to be able to do it on my own terms. But she figured it out and met me, and brought me back to the apartment... where I didn't know I would be living."

"What?!" Clarke knew she was staring now, but she couldn't help it. The more she heard, the more she realized that her assessment of a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma was an accurate one. She had layers – like an onion or an ogre. Or maybe like a parfait.

"What's so funny?" Lexa asked, because Clarke hadn't been able to control her face at the thought.

"Nothing," Clarke said. "Just... random thought."

"Would you care to share with the class?" Lexa asked archly, in that dry tone that went along with the blank mask. 

"Aw, do I have to?" Clarke whined, like a kid caught doing something they shouldn't. 

Lexa pursed her lips, studying her for a moment, then apparently decided to let it go. "I had assumed when I came back that I would be living in the dorms, and I wasn't really looking forward to it. It hadn't occurred to me for some reason that obviously Anya would have to have found her own place to live. She needed a roommate. She decided – unilaterally – that it should be me."

"But you two get along. It seems like you're both pretty happy with it, right?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "We've worked it out."

"I was so scared when I moved in that I was going to hate my roommate," Clarke said. "I got really lucky with Octavia. She's not as neat as I might like her to be sometimes, but she's not mean, or crazy, or constantly having people sleep over..." 

"That's good," Lexa said. "My roommate last year was... unremarkable. Which is sometimes the best things for a roommate to be." 

Their appetizers arrived, and after a quick explanation of what everything was, they dug in, and after that there wasn't much to say except about the food, which Clarke found to be spicy, but not too spicy, and in a different way than salsa and hot sauce. Everything that Lexa had chosen seemed like it was better than the thing before it, and by the time they got to dessert, she was stuffed and grinning.

"Wow," she said. "That was amazing. Thank you."

"You're welcome," Lexa said, with that tiny flicker of a smile that was almost blink and you miss it, but Clarke couldn't miss the way her eyes seemed to light up just a little, and it made her want to reach out and touch her for some reason, but she resisted the urge, afraid that it would kill the moment. "Do you want any of the leftovers?"

"I don't really have anywhere to keep them," Clarke said. "I don't trust the communal fridge. You can take them."

"All right," Lexa said. She motioned for the waiter, who took away the dishes and came back with the check, which she immediately reached for. 

Clarke did the same, and their hands collided, and then they both pulled back like they'd been burned, and reached for it again. "I'll get it," Clarke said. "It's the least I can do."

"No," Lexa said. "I'm taking all of the leftovers. It's only fair."

The set of her jaw told Clarke that she wasn't likely to back down, and although Clarke had a stubborn streak wide as the Mississippi, it wasn't worth arguing. "Next time is on me then," she said, letting her take it.

"Next time?"

"If you want."

Lexa didn't answer, just pulled out her wallet, and once she had her card back, they put on their coats, Lexa picked up the bag of food, and they went outside.

"I guess... I guess I'd better go back," Clarke said, and suddenly all of the food she'd just eaten wasn't sitting well. "Let you get home."

"I don't have to go yet," Lexa said. "Anya only enforces curfew on weeknights."

"Cur..." Clarke made a face at her. "You're joking again."

"You're catching on."

Again, that strange urge to reach out and touch her, and where was that coming from? Maybe it was just the fact that she'd spent the last twenty-four hours feeling ill-at-ease in her own skin; she wanted the solidity of someone else to help ground her. 

"I don't know where we would go," Clarke said. "You don't really strike me as the randomly wandering through stores with no intention of buying anything type."

"No," Lexa said. "We could..." She looked away, and Clarke could see tension rising in her, her shoulders going up just a fraction, but enough that it was obvious – maybe not to a random passerby, but to Clarke who had spent the last hour studying her in between bites – that she was uncomfortable, and soldiering through whatever she was about to do or say anyway. "You could come back to my place," she said finally, the words carefully timed as if they might crash together and come out jumbled if she wasn't careful. "If you wanted to not be alone a while longer."


	38. Lexa

"You could come back to my place." Pause. Breathe. "If you wanted to not be alone a while longer."

She could pretend that the words had come out without her thinking about them, but Lexa wasn't in the habit of lying to herself, and the truth was she _had_ been thinking about them. She'd been thinking about them through at least half of dinner, wondering if she would actually have the nerve to say them. 

Was it nerve? She wasn't the sort of person who held back. When she wanted something, she went after it. If there was something that needed to be said, she said it. She was straightforward, to the point. Abrupt, some people might call it. Rude, others might say, as if she cared about their opinions.

But this was different. This was... She didn't know what this was, except the first time that she'd actually _enjoyed_ herself in... eight months. Eight months now, and there was a part of her that screamed that it was too soon, that it would always be too soon, that she wasn't _allowed_ to enjoy herself, that she didn't deserve to. That living half a life was all she was entitled to.

She didn't want to listen to that part right now. Clarke had reached out. Clarke needed someone to be there for her, and she had asked Lexa to be that person. For lack of a better offer, mostly, but they'd had a good time, hadn't they? Sure, the movie was terrible, but in a way that was almost funny afterward. So bad you couldn't help laughing. And dinner had gone well. They'd talked, and Lexa hadn't felt as if the conversation was riddled with landmines, and it felt _good_.

The truth was, she didn't want it to end. And maybe she was completely misreading things, but she thought that maybe Clarke didn't want it to, either. Even if it was only so she wouldn't be alone. 

So she asked. She offered. And now she waited to see what Clarke would said, trying not to think about how much she wanted her to say yes. 

"Is that—" Clarke started, then stopped, and Lexa wondered if she was going to ask something that would have ended with the response, 'I don't say things I don't mean'. "It won't bother Anya?"

"We'll bribe her with leftovers," Lexa responded, holding up the bag. "She's grading papers and hating her life. She'll probably welcome the distraction."

Clarke just looked at her for a moment longer, and then nodded. "Okay."

"Okay." Lexa almost offered her arm, then realized what she was doing and clamped it against her side. Just because she'd managed a few hours of acting like a relatively normal human being didn't mean she got to forget. "Do you want to walk, or...?"

"I've got my car," Clarke said. "Back at the movie theater."

"Okay," Lexa said, and they headed back that way. They were still a block away when Clarke froze, and Lexa had to sidestep quickly not to knock into her. "What?"

"Finn."

"Where?"

Clarke pulled up her hood and turned her face away, but pointed toward the theater, where sure enough, Finn was standing, loitering around Clarke's car and trying to look like he wasn't. Lexa hoped that someone would notice him and think he was plotting to steal a car or something and call the cops on him. She was tempted to do it herself.

"Okay," Lexa said. "We'll just leave it. Come on." She touched Clarke's elbow gently, getting her moving back in the opposite direction, shooting a text message to Anya as she took Clarke through several turns until they were well away and in no danger of Finn seeing them. She didn't think he'd noticed them approaching, so they ought to be safe. 

"I can't just leave my car," Clarke said finally, as they waited in a little stationary store, pretending to browse the cards, which were mostly garish pink and red affairs, since Valentine's Day was close. Lexa tried not to see, even as she looked, because the last thing she needed right now was saccharine sentiment. She wished she'd paid more attention to what store they were ducking into. 

"We'll get it tomorrow," Lexa said. 

"Tomorrow?"

"Or later," Lexa amended. "Anya's coming to pick us up."

"I'm sorry," Clarke said. "This... my life isn't usually this dramatic."

Lexa nodded, wanting to reach across the space between them (which wasn't very big, really) and touch her, take her hand and squeeze it, reassure her that it was going to be okay. But how did she know? "Have you thought about... telling someone?" Lexa asked. "Like the police?"

"I don't think they would take me very seriously," Clarke said. "It's not like he's _done_ anything."

"I'm pretty sure what he's doing is pretty much the definition of stalking," Lexa said. "You could try to get a restraining order."

Clarke shrugged. "Can we not talk about it?" She looked at Lexa and sighed. "I was having a good time. Why did he have to come and ruin it?"

"Because he's an asshole," Lexa said simply. "There's Anya."

They went back out into the night, and Lexa opened the back door for Clarke, and was about to climb in after her when Anya leaned over. "Don't even think about it," she said. "I am not a taxi driver or chauffeur. You ride shotgun or you walk home."

Lexa held her hands up in surrender, and Clarke smiled. Lexa shut the door then climbed into the passenger's seat, resting the bag of food on her knees. 

"Wow, that smells good," Anya said. "Taste of India?"

"Yes."

"I'm jealous."

"You're welcome to the leftovers," Lexa said. "Especially if it will make you less cranky."

"Me? Cranky? Never." Anya grinned, and Lexa smiled back. It felt strange, feeling the muscles in her face tug that way, like a workout after being down with the flu for a week or something, only it had been far longer since these muscles had been worked. 

"Am I taking you home?" Anya asked Clarke. 

"No," Lexa said, before Clarke could answer. "She's coming back with us."

Maybe she should have let Clarke answer for herself, but she didn't want her to change her mind. Finn would eventually get bored and decide staking out her car wasn't yielding results, and then where would he go? 

Anya quirked an eyebrow at her, then shrugged and turned the car toward home. 

Back at the apartment, Anya dug into the food, having decided she was giving up on grading papers for the moment, and turned on the TV. 

"Let me guess," Lexa said dryly, "Food Network?"

"You better believe it," Anya said. "Where else am I going to get new ideas?"

"If you're getting ideas from Chopped Junior," Clarke said, "I'm not sure I'll be accepting any more dinner invitations." 

"Some of those kids are really good," Anya said. 

"I know," Clarke said. "They're probably better at – what, twelve? – then I'll ever be. But it's the ingredients. Like... if you can't pronounce it, you probably don't want to eat it." 

"Oh, that's just corn fungus," Anya said. 

" _Just,_ " Clarke said, looking at Lexa as if for backup. 

"I've eaten stranger things," Lexa said. "And before you ask what, I'll remind you that Anya is eating. And no, I didn't like them." She shrugged, trying not to remember some of the things she'd been forced to try at the survival camp that her father had signed her up for one summer. She'd learned lots of useful things while she was there. One of the most useful was that although one _could_ eat bugs, it was generally better to lug the extra weight of a few extra MREs.

They settled in to watch, and after a little while Lexa pulled a blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over her lap, offering the other side to Clarke, who shifted close enough to share it. Close enough that if either of them moved around, knees and shoulders were likely to bump into each other, and Lexa tried not to think about it, or about the last time she'd sat this close to someone, or anything but what was happening on the screen.

"I should probably go home," Clarke said during a commercial after a few episodes. "It's getting late." Her voice was soft, and Lexa wasn't sure if she was whispering because she didn't want Anya to hear, or if she kept her voice low because they were words she didn't really want to be saying. 

"You could just stay," Lexa said. "It doesn't pull out, but the couch is big enough to sleep on, and it's pretty comfortable." She also kept her voice low, but she _knew_ it was because she didn't want Anya overhearing. At least not until Clarke answered. Not that she thought that Anya would disapprove, or say that Clarke couldn't stay... she just didn't want to deal with whatever look Anya would give her, and having to decipher what it meant... or know exactly what it meant and just not want to deal with it anyway.

"I..." Clarke looked at her. "I don't want to..." But the way the words trailed off, Lexa suspected that Clarke was saying them just to be polite, and not because it was any kind of definitive statement.

"Stay," Lexa said. "The world and all its problems will still be there in the morning."

A pause that dragged on for a breath, then two, three. "Okay."

They stayed where they were a little longer, and Anya didn't even mention Clarke going home. Eventually she declared that she was tired and going to bed, and disappeared into her room. Lexa went and got Clarke some pajamas to borrow, and found her a spare toothbrush, and let her have the bathroom first while she made the couch into a bed as best she could.

"If you need anything," Lexa said, after she gotten herself ready for bed, "let me know."

Clarke nodded, and Lexa watched her for a few seconds longer before shutting her door.

It wasn't more than a few minutes later before she heard the footsteps in the hallway, and the flip of the switch in the bathroom. Clarke must have forgotten something, because the door never closed, but then she didn't hear the light switch off, either, and the footsteps didn't retreat.

Lexa had to remind herself to breathe as she strained to hear what was happening across the hall. But then she heard Clarke, her voice low but close, like she was standing right outside Lexa's door, maybe even leaning against it. "Good night, Lexa."

She wanted to get up. She wanted to open the door, to invite her in or... She forced herself to stay where she was, but made sure that when she answered, it was loud enough that Clarke would hear. "Good night, Clarke."

She tried to sleep. She really did. But she just tossed and turned, and occasionally dozed, and finally she got up to get a drink of water. Not that she was thirsty, but she needed to move, even if it was only a few steps.

She saw then that Clarke had left the bathroom light on... and her heart ached at the thought that maybe she was afraid of the dark. Not that she didn't have every right to be, with what was going on. She poked her head into the living room, letting her eyes adjust, and heard Clarke gasp, then push herself upright, blinking rapidly as she looked around, trying to process her surroundings. 

Lexa took a step toward her like she was being drawn against her will, but not really. "It's okay," she said softly. "You're safe."


	39. Clarke

"It's okay. You're safe."

The voice in the dark should have freaked her out, but the words... the words registered somewhere deep in her head, and the voice that said them, and Clarke remembered where she was, and why, and who she was with.

"Can you turn on a light?" she asked, because the one she'd left on in the bathroom wasn't enough.

The sound of movement, and then a light came on in the kitchen area, which made things appear as more than just shadows and outlines, but left things dim enough that she wasn't squinting against the sudden brightness. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Lexa stayed where she was, not getting any closer but not going back to her room, either. She looked at Clarke, and there was something... not piercing, but searching in her gaze. "Bad dream?"

Clarke nodded.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really." The details were already starting to fade, and most of the time when you retold a nightmare, it was impossible to really capture what about it had made it so terrifying. She knew that it had been about Finn, and her father too, although she couldn't remember now whether he had been trying to help or hurt her. She shivered, pulled the blanket close around her.

Lexa studied her for another moment, then went into the kitchen and began opening cupboards, getting out mugs and Clarke wasn't sure what else, because the angle from where the couch was didn't allow for a full view of the kitchen. She could have gotten up, or asked, but instead she just left Lexa to it, curling more tightly into herself as if making herself physically smaller would make it harder for the demons she wrestled with to find her. 

A few minutes later Lexa came over and held out a mug. "Hot chocolate," she said. "It's the best thing against a Dementor attack."

For a second Clarke just blinked, reaching out and taking the mug because it gave her something to do while she was trying to figure out how to react. In the end, it was Lexa who filled in the silence. "Do you mind if I join you?"

"No," Clarke said. "I don't mind."

Lexa sat down at the other end of the couch, pulling her feet up and tucking them under Clarke's blankets, and Clarke might have questioned it more if she wasn't so thoroughly thrown off by this girl, who was closed off and brooding one minute and talking about the best remedy for recovering from an attack by a Harry Potter monster the next. 

They sipped their chocolate in silence, and maybe it was just the warmth of the drink, or maybe it was the quiet reassurance that Lexa's presence brought with it, but she felt herself relax again. She tapped her foot against Lexa's under the blanket, and the dark-haired girl looked up. "Thank you," Clarke said again. "For everything."

Lexa just nodded, as if to say that it was nothing, don't even mention it, but it wasn't nothing. It was... it was more than anyone else had given her (not that she blamed them; she hadn't actually told anyone else the whole truth) and right now it was the only thing keeping her from wanting to run as far and as fast as possible to get away from all of this, to lose herself in some place where Finn could never find her. 

"Will it bother Anya if I turn the TV back on?" Clarke asked. 

"No. She sleeps with a fan on. It pretty much drowns out everything."

"Okay." Clarke found the remote and turned it on again, not because she cared at all about what was going on on the screen but because it was background noise, and something to look at other than Lexa. Not that she minded looking at Lexa, but it would be creepy to stare. After a few minutes, she reached behind her and offered Lexa one of the pillows that she'd been given, and was maybe a little surprised when she took it without objection. 

Clarke wasn't sure when she fell asleep, but she woke up to the sounds of two voices pitched low, speaking in a language that she didn't understand. She assumed that it was Lexa and Anya (she wasn't sure she wanted to open her eyes and find out that it wasn't) and that in their travels they had both ended up in the same place, not necessarily at the same time, and shared some language that wasn't English. Whatever it was was a little bit harsh, a little guttural. German maybe? She thought maybe Lexa had mentioned Germany. Whatever it was, it made it hard to tell if they were actually arguing, or if it just sounded that way. 

After a minute Anya went away, and Lexa shifted, obviously trying to extricate herself from the blankets without waking Clarke. After a few moments of her struggling, Clarke finally gave in and opened her eyes, letting her know that she was awake.

"Good morning, Clarke," Lexa murmured. "I'm sorry if I woke you."

"Good morning, Lexa," Clarke replied. "You didn't. Not really."

"I was just getting up to go run. Unless the weather is horrible, Anya and I usually go out every morning. You're welcome to join us if you want to."

"I don't run un—" 

"Unless something is chasing you," Lexa finished for her, and if she didn't actually roll her eyes, she didn't need to. It was all there in her voice. For a second Clarke thought she was going to say more, but she didn't. Instead she just folded back the blanket and sat up, then tucked it back around Clarke's feet. "You're welcome to go back to sleep, then," she said. "We won't be gone long."

"I should—"

"You should think about what you want for breakfast," Lexa interrupted, as if she'd known what Clarke was about to say and didn't want to hear it. Her hand rested on Clarke's knee, just for a second, and maybe it was an accident. "We can go get your car after that."

"Okay," Clarke agreed. "Have a good run."

Anya gave her a quick wave as they left, and then Clarke was on her own in a house – condo, apartment, whatever – that wasn't hers. Part of her wanted to look around, to poke into things and see if she could find any clues as to the mystery that was Lexa, but another part was smart enough to shut the first part down. She got the feeling that Lexa could be very patient, but the minute you did something that violated whatever trust she had extended to you, it was all over. And snooping around her room would almost certainly do that. So she got up and showered instead, and folded up the sheets and blankets, turning it back into a couch... and trying not to think about the fact that obviously Lexa had fallen asleep, too, that she'd stayed with her all night on a couch that could comfortably fit one person laying down, but not so much two, when she could have gone back to her bed, and maybe she hadn't meant to, but maybe she had, and why would she do that? She was just finishing up when they came back, flush-cheeked but seeming barely winded. 

"You didn't have to do that," Lexa said as she shed her jacket, looking at the neat pile of bedding, which included her pajamas. 

"You didn't have to let me stay," Clarke said. "Anyway, I got bored."

"Did you decide what you wanted for breakfast?"

"I'll eat whatever Anya makes," Clarke said. "I'm not picky."

"Do you like bananas?" Lexa asked.

"I don't not like them, although they're not my first choice."

"Blueberries?"

"I like blueberry muffins...?"

"What about blueberry pancakes?"

"Like I said, I'm not picky."

"You can have preferences and not be picky," Lexa said. "Anya gets final say no matter what." She grabbed the stack of blankets and sheets. "I'll be back in a few. I just need to shower."

"Okay." Clarke watched her go, feeling even more awkward being on her own in the house when the other two were in it. She wanted to do something, and under other circumstances she might have decided to make breakfast for them, but she didn't know where everything was kept, for one, and she wasn't sure Anya would appreciate someone else in her kitchen, for another. She saw a coffeemaker on the counter, though, and decided that she could at least do that. 

Unless they didn't drink coffee? Why would they have a coffeemaker if they didn't drink coffee? She tried to think back to whether she'd ever seen either of them with a coffee cup from anywhere and drew a blank. 

She decided to do it anyway. _She_ drank coffee, and it gave her something to do. 

"Hey, thanks," Anya said when she came out and began pulling out pans. "Pancakes?"

"Okay," Clarke said. She could still hear the water running in the bathroom. "Thanks for letting me stay."

"Don't worry about it," Anya said. "Sometimes we all need a place to crash, right? Lexa said that your car is still at the movie theater?"

"Yeah."

Anya looked at her then. "I know it's none of my business, but... maybe you should say something to someone about this. Someone other than just Lexa. She'll do everything she can for you – she doesn't know how to be any way but all in – but she can't be with you all the time. And neither of us wants to see you get hurt."

"I don't think he would hurt me," Clarke said. "I mean..." But how did she know? At this point, how did she have any idea what he might or might not do? Sometimes she thought maybe if she just talked to him, he would finally get it and back off, but wasn't that what she was conditioned to think? And didn't that just feed the problem? Talk to him, and he'll think it means more than it does, and...

"Why don't you sit down?" Anya suggested. She finished making the coffee herself, adding cream and sugar and handing it to Clarke. "There are more kinds of hurt than just physical, Clarke. It's not healthy, looking over your shoulder all the time. Sometimes the scars from that kind of trauma run a lot deeper than the ones you wear on your skin."

She said the words like she knew from experience, but Clarke saw how her gaze drifted toward Lexa's room as she said them. 

"I wouldn't know what to say," Clarke said, "or to who."

"Campus security," Anya said, "or the police. If you catch him doing what he did last night, hanging around your car and waiting for you... call the cops."

So Lexa had told her. Clarke wasn't really surprised. "Maybe," she said. 

"You need to take care of yourself, first and foremost," Anya told her. "We – everyone else – can only do so much."

"I know," Clarke said. "I'm not asking anyone to—"

"I know you're not asking," Anya told her. "But like I said, Lexa doesn't know how to do anything at less than 100%. And she's got your back now. So... just keep that in mind."

Clarke shivered, knowing in her gut what Anya was saying without saying it. Lexa had her back, and so did Anya, probably, and Octavia and maybe even Raven. And Finn might not like that. Meaning that if she didn't deal with him, they stood to get hurt as well.

Lexa came out of the bathroom still rubbing her hair with a towel. It cascaded down her back in loose waves and curls, and Clarke had never seen it not pulled back before. It made her want to reach out and touch it. "What did I miss?"

"Cinnamon chip pancakes," Anya said. "With a cream cheese icing instead of syrup. That's what we decided. Right, Clarke?"

"Right," she agreed, forcing a smile as Lexa sat beside her. For the first time, the fact that Lexa smiled back didn't feel like a victory.


	40. Lexa

The place felt somehow emptier without Clarke in it, and Lexa felt Anya's eyes on her pretty much every time they were in a room together. By dinnertime she was sick of it, and turned on her. "What?" she demanded. "There's something that you want to say. Whatever it is, just say it."

"There's not," Anya said. 

"Then why do you keep watching me?"

"I wasn't aware that I was," Anya replied, her focus on the food, which grated on Lexa's nerves because the least she could do would be to face the accusations head on... and tell the truth. Because there was no way that she wasn't aware of what she was doing; Anya was aware of every move that she made. That was just the kind of person that she was. 

Finally she relented. "It's just... good to see you taking an interest in the world again," she said. "All day, you've seemed lighter." 

"But?" Lexa prompted, because she knew there was more to it than that. There had to be.

"There is no but," Anya said, and Lexa knew that she was lying, but she also knew that when Anya's jaw set like that there would be no getting anything more out of her. When had she learned that? When had they gotten to know each other so well? 

Maybe even in the fog that she'd been in for the past eight months, she'd taken in a few things. Knowing that was reassuring, considering the fact that she had been half-convinced for a while there that she was actually losing her mind. 

She hadn't had that feeling in days, though. Maybe a week or more. And Anya was right – she felt lighter. The thought brought a smile to her lips, but it didn't last, because almost immediately on the heels of that thought was the knowledge that at some point, probably sooner rather than later, the other shoe would drop. Something would happen that would bring this house of emotional cards tumbling down.

_Enjoy it while it lasts,_ part of her said. 

_That will only make it worse when it ends,_ another replied.

_And you don't deserve to be happy anyway,_ said a third, and that voice wasn't her own. 

It was also right.

Anya turned to look at her and sighed. Whatever she wanted to say, she kept to herself. 

That night Lexa couldn't sleep. Couldn't, or didn't want to, she wasn't sure, but it amounted to the same thing. She wondered what Clarke was doing – if her roommate had gotten home, whether Finn had showed up to torment her, whether she would sleep soundly or whether she would be haunted by nightmares – and then tried to push the thoughts aside. 

Her phone chimed, and she reached for it immediately, adrenaline already flowing because who would text her this late at night? Anyone who would couldn't be doing it for any good reason.

**CLARKE:** Good night, Lexa.

That's it? That was all? Just good night?

Her heart pounded behind her ribs and her hands shook slightly as she typed back. 

**LEXA:** Good night, Clarke.

And that was it. There was no response after that, but there didn't need to be. The next night, it was the same thing... and the morning after, as she was eating breakfast (because any earlier would have been too early), she sent a message of her own:

**LEXA:** Good morning, Clarke.

She didn't really expect a response, but one came a minute later. 

**CLARKE:** Good morning, Lexa. Although I'm not too sure about the good yet.

Lexa laughed, and Anya turned and looked at her as if to check and make sure she was all right. 

And so it went, and Clarke commented one morning that Lexa was better than an alarm clock for making sure she didn't oversleep. When Lexa asked if she was waking her up too early, Clarke replied that no, it was good, because otherwise she would hit the snooze and end up scrambling to get where she needed to be, often skipping breakfast. She said even Octavia appreciated it, even though she grumbled when Clarke was up and moving around at an actual reasonable hour.

They passed each other occasionally on the street or in the halls of various buildings, and they shared lunch a couple of times when their schedules lined up. Clarke didn't mention anything more about Finn, and Lexa was tempted to bring it up, but she wasn't sure that Clarke would give her a straight answer if she did, and then she would find herself getting sucked in to whatever conversation they were having and forgetting about him... and everything else.

It was the best half an hour of the day, those days.

And then she saw _her_. 

Just a glimpse, out of the corner of her eye, but she didn't need more. She would know _her_ anywhere. Hadn't she spent over a year making a study of her? Her face, her hair, the lines of her body... 

She chased after her through the people gathered on the sidewalk, elbowing her way past when necessary and leaving a trail of curses and dirty looks in her wake. But no matter how fast she walked, she couldn't seem to close the distance between them, and then _she_ was just... gone. Like she'd never been there in the first place.

Lexa ran all the way home after that, and locked herself in her room. She'd seen _her_. She knew that she had. She hadn't imagined it. It wasn't a case of mistaken identity. It _wasn't_. It couldn't be.

Somewhere along the line it had gotten dark, and Lexa hadn't bothered to turn on any lights. Even when she noticed, she didn't get up. The darkness suited her fine. 

"Lexa? Are you in there?" Anya called through the door. She tried to doorknob but it wouldn't twist. "Lexa?" A pause, waiting for Lexa to respond presumably, and then she rattled the door again. "Lexa, let me in."

Because she couldn't be sure that Anya wouldn't bust the lock if she didn't, Lexa forced herself to stand and unlock it, falling back a step as it pushed open, and wincing as Anya flicked on the light. 

"You could have told me that you weren't meeting me," Anya said, her tone dripping with reproof. "I waited around for half an hour, and when you didn't respond to my texts I thought maybe something had happened to you."

Lexa knew that she was supposed to apologize. She should have told her she was home. She shouldn't have left her waiting. She hadn't thought. She couldn't, because there was no room in her head for anything but one simple fact:

"I saw _her_."

Anya blinked, and then sighed, deflating like a pricked balloon, all of her anger turning instantly to concern. "I'm sorry," she said. 

"Why?"

"It must be hard, to think—"

"I don't _think_ ," Lexa said. "I _know_. I saw her."

Anya shook her head. "No, Lexa, you didn't. You didn't see her. You _thought_ you saw her. You might have seen someone who looked very like her. But you didn't see her."

"I _did_!" Lexa insisted. "You weren't there. You—"

"I was," Anya said. "I was there, when you weren't allowed to be. And maybe that's the worst thing that they ever could have done to you, keeping you from being there, keeping you from seeing. Letting you keep believing that maybe, somehow, it wasn't true. It didn't happen. But it is, and it did, and you need to admit it."

Lexa shook her head, for a second – longer than a second – tempted to clamp her hands over her ears so she didn't have to hear what Anya was saying. But Anya would just pull them away, because everyone had their limits and apparently Anya had finally hit hers. 

"You need to admit it," Anya repeated. "You didn't see her."

No. Not this. Not now. She had _seen_ her. She _had_. Hadn't she? 

"I thought..."

"I know." Anya reached out, took her hands, held them tight as she nudged Lexa back toward her bed, pressing her gently backwards until she sat, and Anya crouched in front of her. "I know. But you didn't."

Lexa shook her head, and her voice was barely a whisper. "No." 

"You couldn't have."

"No." Not this. Not now.

"And you know why."

She finally looked up, looked Anya in the eye, tried to stop her with a glare. " _No._ "

"Yes. Lexa." Anya's voice was soft, gentle, and it made Lexa's chest ache because she knew what was coming, knew the words that she was going to say, knew that there was no escaping this, knew that she had been lucky that she'd made it this long without this confrontation. 

Eight months that felt like a lifetime and the span of a breath all at once.

Anya's fingers tightened around hers. "You can't keep doing this. You can't... It's tearing you apart, and I can't... I can't watch you do this every few days, or weeks, or months. And the answer isn't for me to go away, for me to stop watching. You know that, too."

"Please." Lexa knew what Anya wanted, and knew just as surely that she couldn't, wouldn't, didn't want to give it. 

Eight months, and she wasn't ready.

"You need to say it," Anya said softly. "You need to hear it in your own voice, because maybe you'll believe yourself when you won't believe anyone else."

She looked away. It was too much. 

She would never be ready.

"I can't."

"You can," Anya insisted, gentle but persistent. "You are so much stronger than you know, Lexa. This will not break you."

Lexa took a deep breath, and it came out as a shudder. She'd seen her... except she hadn't. She couldn't have. Because _she_ was gone. "I didn't see her."

"No," Anya agreed. "You didn't see her."

Another breath. "She's gone."

Anya shook her head. "She's not _gone_ , Lexa."

_Please,_ Lexa wanted to beg. _Please can't you let that be enough?_ But of course it wasn't. It was true, but it wasn't the truth. Not all of it. Not enough. 

"She's..." She swallowed, and she didn't know who was squeezing their hands together so hard bones grated, but she focused on the physical pain because it was easier than dealing with the tearing that was going on inside her, the ripping open of old wounds that hadn't ever really scarred properly. "She's dead."

"Her name, Lexa," Anya whispered, and now their foreheads were pressed together, and they formed their own little world of two bodies and one huge, all-consuming pain. 

"Costia." It felt like she was coughing it up from somewhere deep inside of her, the name that she had swallowed eight months ago and sworn to herself she would never speak again, because if she did, it would be like giving up part of her, and she wouldn't, she couldn't... she wasn't ready...

"You need to say it," Anya said. 

She shook her head, bone rocking against bone until Anya took her face between her hands and steadied her, caught her gaze and held it, and there were tears in her eyes and Anya never cried and neither did she, and she was breaking, crumbling into pieces that all had jagged edges, and something vital inside of her was bleeding... her heart, it had to be her heart, but how could it be when she'd given it away, hadn't she? and the one she'd given it away to...

"Costia," she said again. The one she'd given it away to... "Is dead."

"And you're not," Anya told her, and when she finally broke, when the last brittle parts of her shattered, and the tears came, Anya held her tight, telling her over and over again the thing that was hardest of all to hear: "You're alive. You're alive, and you're going to be okay."


	41. Clarke

This was a bad idea. Quite possibly one of the worst ideas Clarke had ever had. But she was out of good ideas, so all that was left was bad ones, and as far as she could figure, this was _slightly_ better than the idea of approaching Finn directly.

She knocked on Raven's door.

"Go away!" The voice on the other side was muffled, but not so much that she couldn't tell that it was her. 

"Raven, it's Clarke!" she called back. "I come bearing gifts!"

"I'm busy!" Raven shouted, but Clarke thought she heard her moving around. A minute later the door cracked open and one dark eye peered out. "Is it alcohol?"

"No."

"Is it a warm, fuzzy kitten?"

"No."

"What good are you, then?" Raven asked, but she pulled the door open anyway, letting Clarke in. "Is it chocolate?"

"Yes," Clarke said, handing her a big bag of miniature candy bars. She hadn't known what Raven liked, so she'd decided that an assortment was best. 

"Wait, you can get these when it's not Halloween?" Raven asked. 

"You didn't know that?" Clarke asked. "Are you sure you grew up here? And by here, I mean on Earth?"

Raven rolled her eyes at her as she pulled out a utility tool and used one of the blades to slash open the plastic, sending candy scattering across the floor. "Could you get those for me?" she asked. "I would, but..." She gestured to her leg in its brace and rolled her eyes again. 

"Of course," Clarke said, crouching down and reaching under the bed to retrieve a few that had slid under. "Ow!" She pulled back her hand and saw that whatever she had touched had drawn blood. She stuck her finger into her mouth and sucked on it, even as her mother's voice echoed in her head telling her that the human mouth was filled with germs and bacteria and that the first blood that rushed from the wound was important because there was a lot of clotting stuff in it. _Shut up, Mom,_ she thought, and sucked harder. "Something bit me."

"Nah," Raven said. "Just cut you. I keep my failed experiments under there, but none of them bite."

Clarke peered under again, and sure enough, the whole space was a mess of metal parts and scraps of wire. "Is that a Roomba?"

"No," Raven said. "It _was_ a Roomba."

"You're like the Frankenstein of the robot set or something," Clarke joked. She handed the fallen candy to Raven, who sat down on the edge of her bed and gestured for Clarke to take the desk chair. 

"You don't mind if I...?" Raven asked, gesturing to the brace again. "My leg is killing me."

"Why would I mind?" Clarke asked. "Do you need any help?"

"Nah, I got it," Raven said, and began to work open the straps that held it in place. "What brings you here?"

Now that she was here, looking at Raven as she struggled to free herself of the metal contraption that helped her stand and walk (but at what cost?), Clarke was pretty sure that this might be the worst possible idea after all. Why drag her into the whole mess with Finn when she'd already so neatly extricated herself from it? It wasn't right. 

"Nothing," Clarke said. "I just... bought the candy on impulse and then realized if I let it sit around I would just eat it all, and..." She shrugged.

"So you decided to give it to me?"

"If I gave it to Octavia I would have to live with her, and although she won't admit it, I think she's a little lactose intolerant, and chocolate is not her best friend," Clarke said, flashing a grin.

"Gross," Raven said, laughing. She had gotten the brace off, and was now working on her boot, but her laces had tied themselves into knots and she was having trouble getting her foot at the right angle to unknot them. 

"I've got it," Clarke said, taking her foot and picking apart the knot deftly, then worked the boot off and set it on the floor. She kept Raven's foot in her lap, working her fingers over it, and up her ankle. 

Raven groaned. "You don't have to do that," she said. "But please don't stop."

"Wasn't planning on it," Clarke said. "I... I guess I didn't just come because of the candy."

"You guess?" Raven dragged over her pillows to prop herself up on so that she could sprawl and see Clarke at the same time. 

"It's about Finn," Clarke said.

This time it was a groan of a whole different kind, and Clarke was pretty sure Raven would have pulled away if she'd let her. "You're not seriously doing this, are you?" Raven asked. "Because we're friends, Clarke, but if you are coming to me for advice on how to get with—"

"I'm not," Clarke said. "I'm not trying to get with him. At all. I'm trying to get _away_ from him, and..." She frowned. "He doesn't seem to want to take 'no' for an answer."

"Well that's an easy one to fix," Raven said. "Just find another girl for him to fall in love with. Worked great for me." Her tone was as bitter as black coffee, but her eyes were closed and Clarke didn't have to wonder very hard what she was trying to hide.

"I'm sorry," Clarke said. "I swear to you, I didn't know."

"I know," Raven said. "I believe—ow, easy, please..." 

"Sorry," Clarke said again. "I don't actually know how to do this."

"You're remarkably good at it for a clueless girl, then," Raven said. "And at least you say you're sorry, unlike the sadists at PT. Did you know that there's such a thing as 'good pain'?" She opened her eyes, forcing a smile. "They keep trying to convince me of that, and I'm not buying it. I started calling my physical therapist Mr. Grey. He didn't think it was very funny."

"He's wrong," Clarke said. "It's hilarious." But neither of them were laughing.

"I should be the one saying I'm sorry," Raven said after a minute, as Clarke worked her way up her ankle to her calf. "I kind of derailed the conversation there. Bad habit."

"It's okay," Clarke said. "It's not really fair of me to bring him up, given the circumstances. But you know him better than anyone, so I thought maybe..." She shrugged. She didn't know what she thought. 

"I thought I did," Raven said. "Maybe I didn't." She looked at Clarke, catching her gaze and holding it. "Just ask what you need to ask," she said. "I won't get pissed."

"When you were with him, did he ever... scare you?"

Raven blinked. Clearly that hadn't been the question that she'd expected. "Scared me how?"

"Like..." Clarke searched for the words. "Did he ever just get really intense about things, to the point where you started to think, or feel like... like maybe he would take things too far? Or if things didn't go his way, he might... do something stupid?"

Silence, except the sound of both of them breathing, Raven's catching and hissing out slowly as Clarke worked out a knot. "I don't think I really thought about it that way," Raven said. "Not at the time. I just thought it was... cute, I guess. Or romantic. That it – we - _I_ \- mattered so much to him that he would get so amped up about it, you know?"

"I guess," Clarke said. She didn't know, but she thought that she could understand. Especially since from all accounts, Finn had been Raven's first and only boyfriend. If things had sort of built up over time, she might have been pretty acclimated to it by the time things hit a level where they might seem questionable. Whereas with her, Finn had gone pretty much zero to max intensity in a matter of weeks... and weeks was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

"What's he doing?" Raven asked. 

"Following me," Clarke said. "Everywhere."

"Oh." Raven pursed her lips. "Like to the point where there's no way you can just dismiss it as coincidence?"

"Yeah."

Raven sighed. "That's... I would say that's not like him, but I can totally see him doing that. When we were together, sometimes he would check in on me, and it would be sweet... except then it would happen too often, or at times when it really was inappropriate, and..." She frowned. "We fought about it a few times, and he would chill out, and then it would start happening again. I just... I guess I just kind of wrote it off as a 'Finn thing'. A character flaw that you learn to accept because you love the person. But when you hear someone else say it, you immediately start thinking 'stalker'." She looked at Clarke again, reaching out to still her hands for a minute. "Have you talked to anyone about it?"

"Like campus security?"

"I guess that would be the place to start, if it's happening at school," Raven said. 

"What would I say? More importantly, what could they do?"

"I don't know," Raven said. "But at least they could be aware? And then if something did happen and you had to call them, they would know that it was urgent? It would alert them to a pattern of behavior?" Her forehead furrowed. "You've told him that you're not interested, right?"

"Yes," Clarke said. "After I met you, and found out that you two were still dating, I told him that before anything could happen between us, he had to talk to you. Which he took to mean that once he did, it would be full speed ahead, I guess. But by then I'd had time to think about it, and it just... that's not the kind of person that I want to be with. Like you said, what happens when another girl catches his eye?"

"Right."

Clarke moved to working the muscles just above Raven's knee, which she figured was about as high as she could go before things started to get a little awkward between them. "I keep going back and forth, trying to decide whether I should confront him or not, tell him that I've noticed that he's following me and telling him that I want him to stop."

"Why wouldn't you?" Raven asked.

"Because I'm afraid of what he might do," Clarke said honestly. "I'm afraid of his reaction."

"You think he would hurt you?" Raven asked.

"I don't know," Clarke said. "But I'm not really willing to take a chance on finding out."

"Then take a chance on the powers that be," Raven said. "If they don't do anything, and he keeps it up, take it to the police. If they do nothing, then..."

Neither of them said it, and maybe Clarke was the only one thinking it, but all she could see in her head was a headline about a dead body found on the Ark University campus. She shivered. 

"It'll be okay," Raven said. "We've got your back." 

"Thanks," Clarke said. "That means a lot."

She didn't stay much longer after that, and when she started to leave, Raven pushed herself up and wrapped Clarke in a hug before letting her go. As tempting as it was to just head back to her dorm room, she forced herself go to the campus security office, watching over her shoulder the entire way.

"Can I help you?" the officer at the desk asked.

"I need to talk to someone," she said. "I think I'm being stalked."


	42. Lexa

Lexa managed not to jump out of her skin when a hand landed on her shoulder, but only just barely. She tugged her headphones out of her ears and looked up, and was relieved when it was Clarke smiling down at her. 

"Sorry," Clarke said. "I didn't mean to startle you." 

"You didn't," Lexa lied.

"Do you mind if I join you?"

"Go ahead," Lexa said, motioning to the seat across from her in the little booth where she'd holed up to pass a few hours between classes, because she didn't feel like going all the way home and risking not wanting to come back. 

"Thanks." Clarke settled down with her tray, taking a bite of her sandwich and chewing, then wiping her mouth with a napkin as mustard smeared her lips. Not that Lexa noticed that. Not that she was watching. "You know, for someone who doesn't have to eat dining hall food, you sure do eat a lot of dining hall food."

Lexa rolled her eyes. "I'm not good at remembering to pack a lunch at night, and then in the morning I don't feel like it. And Anya has informed me that I am a quote-unquote grown-ass adult who can pack her own lunch. So she won't do it for me."

Clarke laughed, and Lexa found herself smiling back at her, and it was like a bubble had formed in her chest that threatened to burst and flood her with... what? happiness? she didn't even know, but something that she hadn't felt in a very long time. "Well, if it means that I get to see you more often, I don't mind," Clarke said.

Lexa blinked, because the way the words had come out, it had sounded almost like flirting, but that wasn't right. It couldn't be. Impossible might be too strong a word, but 'highly unlikely' seemed pretty close to the mark. She was just hearing things. And seeing them, as Clarke's cheeks flushed pale pink. 

"I told them," Clarke blurted out, when the silence had stretched for a little too long. "Campus security. I told them about Finn."

"Good," Lexa said, and meant it. "What did they say?"

"Not much," Clarke said. "There's not a lot they can do when all he's doing is following me, apparently. He has to actually _do_ something before they get involved."

"So they need you to get hurt before they can help you prevent getting hurt?" Lexa sighed. "That's... less than helpful. But at least they're aware, I guess. It's something. If you have to call them, if he does do something, at least maybe they'll take it more seriously." 

"That's what Raven thought," Clarke said. "We'll see. Maybe he'll just... give up. Maybe he'll finally take a hint."

"I'm not sure that people like that understand anything less subtle than a kick to the groin, and even that leaves room for interpretation." Lexa meant for her tone to come off light, like she was joking or at least exaggerating, but it didn't work.

"I wouldn't even know how to do that," Clarke said. "I mean, I guess it's not that difficult, but..." She shrugged. "Octavia keeps encouraging me to come to class with her, but I don't really think that's my scene."

Lexa cocked her head. Clarke _did_ know that she trained with Octavia, right? That sometimes she helped _teach_ Octavia? "Why not?"

"I just... I'm not really big on... moving? Exercise?" Lexa snorted, and Clarke at least had the good grace to look sheepish. "I'm sure that it's not as bad as I'm thinking, but right now I just don't think I can stomach the idea of going through calisthenics and drills and all of the actual _martial_ aspects of martial arts."

"But?" Lexa prompted, sensing that there was one.

"But I guess maybe the self-defense part of it might be useful," Clarke said. "But that's only a small part of it, and I wouldn't stick with it if I was miserable in between the parts that I found useful."

At least she was honest. Lexa had to admire that. She dipped her chin in acknowledgment. "If you wanted, I could teach you," she offered, before she could really think about what she was saying. "You could come to the dojang after class and I could work with you there, or we could meet somewhere else. It just needs to be somewhere with mats."

"I don't really have any way to pay for it, though, and I'm assuming that private lessons aren't cheap," Clarke said. 

"I'm not asking you to pay," Lexa said, although it made her wonder whether Master Gustus would let her use the dojang to work with some random girl for free. Probably not. She would pay for the time out of her own pocket, then, if she had to. Considering she pretty much had no social life, it wasn't like she was doing anything else with the spending money that her father sent to her every month. 

"I can't ask you to do it for free," Clarke said. "Teachers should get paid."

"I'm not a teacher," Lexa said. "I'm your friend."

As soon as she said it, she found herself searching Clarke's face for any indication of how the words had landed, mostly looking for any sign of disagreement. Because they weren't really _friends_ , were they? Friends did things together. They just... Lexa was just the girl who'd offered to be there when Clarke had no one else. That probably didn't qualify as friendship.

"You can be both," Clarke said. 

"But I'm your friend first," Lexa said, hiding her relief that she hadn't managed to make things weird between them with her declaration of friendship. She'd made that mistake a lot when she was younger – much younger – before she realized that it was easier to just not get attached to people because she never got to keep them anyway. "Come to class with Octavia one night. You can watch the regular class, and then after, we'll see. Please?"

Clarke's lips pursed, and then she finally nodded. "All right. But no promises."

"I wouldn't ask for one," Lexa said. She almost reached across the table then, to touch Clarke's hand and seal the moment as if it _was_ a promise after all. Instead she picked up her fork and shoved her free hand into her hoodie pocket.

Clarke didn't show up that week. Lexa had pretty much given up on the idea of her showing up at all when she walked in after Octavia one day, sitting in one of the chairs in the little lobby area that was, during childrens' classes, a mess of shoes and bags and parents. But the kids were gone, and there were very few of them there for adult class that night.

Lexa padded over to her, bowing as she stepped off the mat. "You came," she said. 

"I figured I could at least watch," Clarke replied. "Like you said. If that's all right."

"It's fine," Lexa said. "You can sit right there." She'd already alerted Master Gustus that a friend might stop by, and made arrangements to have the dojang for a little while after class if Clarke decided that she wanted to. It had been a bit of an argument to get it, but she'd won in the end. She knew that her instructor had a point – that teaching Clarke just a little bit of self-defense once or twice might not help her in the heat of the moment; you had to drill and drill something before it became second nature. 

"But knowing something is better than knowing nothing," she'd pointed out, and he'd finally acquiesced. 

"I'll stick around in the office," he'd said. "Let me know if you need me." 

Lexa bowed back onto the mat and went to finish stretching out. She was acutely aware of Clarke's presence the entire class, and on the one hand it drove her crazy because this was the place where she was supposed to be able to go and just not think about anything but exactly what she was doing for a little while. On the other, it made her push herself harder, and try to execute everything perfectly. She was grateful that no one said anything about it; she didn't really want Clarke to know that she was essentially showing off for her.

Class ended, and they filed off the mat. Lexa approached Clarke, grabbing her water bottle and taking a swallow. "Do you think you want to try?"

"I don't know if I'll be any good," Clarke said.

"Most people aren't, when they start," Lexa said. "Come on." Again, her fingers twitched as she resisted the urge to touch the other girl, and she just motioned (a bit awkwardly, it felt like, but maybe Clarke was too caught up in whatever was going on in her own head to notice) for her to follow. Clarke took off her shoes and socks and stepped onto the mat.

"We'll stretch out a little first," Lexa said. 

"Do you mind if I stay?" Octavia asked. "I could use the review."

"You can work with Anya," Lexa said, because she had already agreed that she would stay and help out demonstrating things if necessary... and also saving Lexa having to walk home, or herself from having to come back. 

"Thanks."

In the end, they spent a little over half an hour working through the basics – where it hurt most to hit someone, how to throw a punch so that you don't break your own hand, why it was better to not throw a punch at all (hitting with the heel of your hand or your elbow was generally a better option) – and how to get away from various different grabs and holds. Clarke was a quick learner, and Lexa found herself praising her more than she would have most students. 

"Not that I'm likely to remember any of this tomorrow," Clarke joked – or maybe she wasn't joking – as they put their shoes and coats on. 

"Then you come back tomorrow and I'll teach you again," Lexa said. "Or you work with Octavia to review it. Some of it probably won't work in a dorm room, or at least wouldn't be very comfortable, but there's no reason you can't do some of it. And it's good for her to review."

"Especially with testing coming up," Octavia said. "I get to be a little less marshmallow-like." She flipped the end of her white belt.

"If you can't come here, we can find other places to meet," Lexa said. "Just let me know."

"Thank you," Clarke said. As they walked out, she fell a few steps behind Anya and Octavia, who were talking about some move or other, and Lexa slowed her pace to match.

"Everything all right?" she asked.

"Yeah," Clarke said. "I just... I was going to say it before, but..." She looked at Lexa. "You're beautiful," she said. "I mean—" She cleared her throat, and it was hard to tell in the weird yellow glow of the streetlights, but Lexa thought Clarke was blushing. She knew that she sure as hell was, and hoping that somehow Clarke wouldn't notice. "I was watching the class, but really I was just watching you. It's – obviously it's violent, the whole thing is violent, but the way you do it, the way you move... it's beautiful."

"Thank you," Lexa said, because what else could she say? And then Octavia called for Clarke, and Clarke muttered something that was probably, 'Gotta go,' and left Lexa standing there, trying to work out how to put one foot in front of the other because Clarke's words had paralyzed her.

She didn't actually manage to work it out until Clarke was pulling out of the parking lot. Anya looked at her curiously, but she just shook her head, and was grateful when Anya just let it go.

She laid in bed that night long after Clarke had texted her to thank her again, and to wish her good night, turning the words over and over in her head, examining them for flaws, cracks, and finding none. She finally fell asleep sometime after midnight, still smiling.


	43. Clarke

Octavia's glares, along with a growing sense that maybe she was being a little bit childish in continuing to hold a grudge, persuaded Clarke to accept her mother's invitation to go out to lunch when she called to say that she was going to be in town. (Well, she'd left a voicemail first, and Clarke had considered not responding, but that's when Octavia had started glaring.) 

So they sat down across from each other at the Indian restaurant where Lexa had taken Clarke on their... not a date. It wasn't a date. Except it had kind of felt like one. "I didn't know you liked Indian food," her mother had said, when she'd chosen the place. 

"I didn't either," Clarke said. "A friend brought me here."

"I have to admit, my previous experiences haven't been good, but I'll trust you."

"Okay," Clarke agreed, and they'd distracted themselves for a few minutes with the menu, but once their order had been taken, there was only so much avoiding each other's gaze that they could do. Or, more accurately, there was only so much that Clarke could avoid her mother's eyes, and finally she gave up on trying. "Are you here for a conference or something? Or a consult?"

"Yes," her mother said. "For the baby."

Clarke hoped that she managed to conceal her cringe. She'd been asking if her mother was here to act as a consult on a case, not whether she was here for consultation on her own... condition. She hadn't forgotten – that was impossible, considering that her mother was far enough along that it was starting to show, although it looked like she was doing her best to try and conceal it – but she'd been trying to ignore it. Because even if she knew in her head that she was being a brat about it, in her heart she still felt betrayed, or like her mother had betrayed her father, or something. 

Still, she had to try to be the better person. Or at least not an asshole. "Is everything okay?" she asked.

"Everything's fine," her mother said. "But when you get pregnant at my age, especially if you haven't had any pregnancies in a long time, they consider it to be high risk, even if everything is going smoothly. There's extra tests and everything that they do, and so Marcus pulled some strings to make sure that I got the best of the best."

"Marcus." The word was bitter, and Clarke reached for one of the thin bread-cracker things (Lexa had told her the name, but she'd forgotten) and dipped it in the sweet sauce that was her favorite of the three offered, shoving it in her mouth to wash away the taste.

"Yes," Abby said. "Marcus." 

"Why isn't he here?" Clarke asked. "Shouldn't he be with you?"

"He offered," Abby replied. "I told him that there was no need for both of us to take the time away from work when there was no reason whatsoever to believe that the results were going to be anything but good."

There was more to it that her mother wasn't saying, and Clarke assumed that it had to do with her. If her mom had known that she was planning to meet up, she probably hadn't wanted to rock the boat more than was absolutely necessary. 

"Oh," Clarke said, because she didn't know what else to say. "When will you have the results?"

"Some of the tests we should have in a day or two, some take about a week to get the results. They'll try to rush them as much as they can, as a favor, but you know how these things go." She smiled, like they were sharing some secret.

Clarke didn't smile back. "I hope everything's okay," she said. "With the baby."

"Thank you," Abby said. "I appreciate that." She paused, then added, "I know that it's a lot to deal with all at once, Clarke. Believe me when I tell you that this wasn't our plan."

"Then how did it happen?" Clarke asked. Because Abby Griffin didn't do things by accident. She didn't make mistakes. Every move that she made was calculated. Or so Clarke had always believed. Not that she thought that her mother had _planned_ the accident that had killed her father, exactly... but she didn't exactly _not_ believe that, either. She had been sure, ever since it happened, that her mother had been secretly relieved to be rid of him, because it allowed her to go on with her life however she saw fit, without having to worry about how he felt about it. Or how Clarke did, either, but from the time she was pretty young, her mother had treated her like she was old enough to handle adult things.

"Things just happen," her mother told her. "Carelessness, I suppose. Use protection _every_ time." She smiled wryly. 

"There's nothing to protect myself against," Clarke told her, but a knot started to form in the pit of her stomach even as she said it, because there was, actually, but it wasn't pregnancy. She hadn't seen Finn _everywhere_ she was lately, but he'd turned up enough that she was pretty sure he hadn't decided to move on. He'd just become more subtle about it. Which was worse, in a way, because it gave her moments of hope during which she started to let down her guard, only to have it come back to bite her when he popped up again.

"What's wrong?" Abby asked, because of course she'd noticed something in Clarke's expression. If she wasn't Mother of the Year, she was still pretty damn observant. 

"Nothing," Clarke said, the automatic teenage response. 

"I don't believe you," her mother said. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Clarke repeated. "There's just this guy..." But she didn't know what to say after that. She didn't know how to follow it up. _There's just this guy who I slept with a couple of times, and now he thinks that we're something that we're not, and it's your fault because if you hadn't made me run out on Christmas I never would have ended up in his bed._

But her mother hadn't _made_ her do anything. That had been her choice. Her bed that she'd made, as the saying went, no pun intended, etc. And now she was doing everything that she could to avoid having to lay in it.

"This guy...?" Abby prompted.

"This guy that I started to get involved with, a little, but then I discovered he wasn't really who he said he was, and so I broke up with him. Not that we were even really together. But he doesn't want to take no for an answer, and... sometimes it feels like he's following me." _And by 'sometimes' I mean 'all the time'._

Her mother's forehead creased as she frowned. "Clarke, that's pretty serious."

"I know. I told campus security. I don't... I don't know what they can do about it, though," she admitted.

"If he's really following you, you may need to get the police involved. Has he made any kind of threats against you?"

"No," Clarke said. "Nothing like that. He's not that kind of guy."

Her mother's eyebrows went up, and she gave her that patented Mom Look that they saved for their kids when they said something really stupid. "Clarke."

"He's a nice guy," Clarke said. "Or at least he makes himself seem that way. You know? Until you realize that a lot of it is a façade, but by then, it's sort of too late."

"It's not too late," her mother said. "No means no, and if he can't accept that, then that's his problem. Except he's clearly making it your problem, and that's not okay."

"I know, Mom," Clarke said. "I'm dealing with it."

Abby sighed. "I don't want anything to happen to you, sweetie. The things that you see in the news these days..."

"I'm taking some self-defense," Clarke said. "A friend is teaching me."

"Oh? Who?"

"Her name is Lexa," Clarke said. "You haven't met her." 

"Well, I'm glad that she's helping you," Abby said. "And I would love to meet her sometime."

"Yeah," Clarke said, as noncommittal an answer as she could manage. She'd never really had a problem with her mother meeting her friends before, but Lexa... Lexa felt different, somehow. And right now she kind of just wanted to keep her all to herself. For Lexa's protection, she told herself. Because she was obviously going through some shit, too, and the last thing she needed was to be subjected to the third degree by Abby Griffin, who would make it seem like polite conversation as she grilled her for the details of who she was and where she came from. 

'She's just protective,' her father had always told her. 'Like a mother lion.'

'I don't need her to protect me,' Clarke had always replied. 

But now she thought maybe she was wrong. Maybe she _did_ need someone to have her back. Maybe she needed a mother lion to stand up for her. But it wasn't like her mom was going to confront Finn – she'd never even met him, and hopefully she never would – so it was kind of a stupid thought.

Their food arrived, and they were mostly quiet then, lost in their own little worlds of thought. Once the bill was paid, they headed outside, and almost immediately Clarke saw him. And it felt like a car crash that you saw coming but couldn't avoid as he broke into a grin and trotted across the street. "Clarke!" he said. "Long time no see!"

_You asshole,_ she thought. "Hi, Finn," she said. "Sorry, but we're kind of in a hurry."

"You must be Clarke's mom," he said, undeterred. "I'm Finn."

"Pleasure to meet you, Finn," her mom said, taking his offered hand and shaking it. "We really do have to get going, though."

"Oh, sure, of course," he said. "I look forward to talking to you again some time. I'll see you later, Clarke."

"Yeah, later," she said. Because of course he would. Even if she didn't see him, he would see her. She shivered, and reached to take her mother's hand without thinking, squeezing hard.

"Is that him?" her mom whispered.

"Yes."

Abby frowned. "We're going to the police," she said. 

"He hasn't _done_ anything," Clarke said.

"I don't care. We're going anyway. This is how it starts, and I'm not going to let it end the way these things so often do. You're going to be all right, Clarke. We're going to keep you safe." When she said it, Clarke knew that she meant it... and also knew how impossible it likely was. But if Finn was still following them, and saw them go to the police, maybe that would be enough to stop him.

She could hope, anyway... except she knew not to trust something so fragile.


	44. Lexa

Two weeks ago, she'd been completely convinced that she'd seen something that she hadn't. This time Lexa was desperate to convince herself that she hadn't seen what she was absolutely sure that she had, because there was no reason for it and it didn't make sense. 

Why should it make sense? Nothing had in the last eight months; why would it suddenly start now?

"I just remembered something," she told Clarke, trying to be casual even as she stopped dead in her tracks. They'd had lunch together (again – it was becoming a habit) and had been planning to walk to their next classes together, since they were in the same building, but now she had to shake her somehow, or risk... she didn't even know what. "You go on without me." 

"I can wait," Clarke said. 

"It might take a while," Lexa tried. "I don't want you to be late."

"My class starts at the same time yours does," Clarke said, confusion etching lines between her eyes. "I have as much time as you do."

Lexa frowned, wanting to snap at her to just go, but not actually wanting to let on that there was anything wrong, because then there would be questions that she didn't want to answer. Or she would drive Clarke away for more than just right now, and she didn't want that either. 

"Okay," Lexa said. "Fine." She turned to head back into the building, and Clarke followed, and Lexa had to make up some fake errand that she could potentially have forgotten which basically meant she went into one of the little offices and came back out again, and thank whatever powers might be that Clarke didn't decide to follow her in. 

Clarke smiled when she came back out. "Ready?"

Lexa nodded, and hoped that when they left the building again, everything would be all right. 

Maybe it would have been, if Clarke hadn't started talking about her mother's visit, and how it seemed to have deterred Finn, at least somewhat, and maybe this whole nightmare would be over soon, and Lexa gave her full attention to her because she honestly hadn't figured out how not to. So she didn't notice that she'd been spotted, and she didn't see that they were being approached, and by the time she did it was too late.

"So this is your new victim?"

Lexa froze, then forced herself to keep walking, acting as if she hadn't heard. She almost reached out to take Clarke's arm, to pull her along a little faster, but realized that it would only make things worse if she did. 

"You're just going to ignore me? After what you did?"

Clarke turned to look, and Lexa had to stop too, because if she just kept walking and left Clarke there, she didn't know what she would hear, and it wasn't a chance that she could take. Even if whatever was said was close to the truth... she didn't want Clarke to hear it. Not here, not now, not like this. Clarke had enough going on in her own life (even if she thought maybe that was finally resolving) that she didn't need to get caught up in Lexa's problems, too.

"Do you know who this girl is?" the woman asked, now addressing Clarke directly. "Do you know what she's done?"

"I'm sorry," Clarke said. "Do I know you?"

"Mrs. Walker, please," Lexa said. "Please don't—"

"Don't what? Don't tell this poor girl the truth about you? About what you've done? About what you're capable of?"

Clarke looked at her then, and back at Mrs. Walker and back to her. "Lexa?"

"Go," Lexa told her. "Just go to class, Clarke."

But Clarke didn't go. Of course she didn't go. She was too stubborn for that... and too loyal, maybe. Because it was obvious that there was something going on here, something not good, and she wasn't going to let Lexa face it on her own. Because friends didn't do that, and they were friends. She didn't even need Clarke to say it, or anything like it. It was written on her face, and she was as easy to read as Dick and Jane.

"You don't know anything about her, do you?" Mrs. Walker asked. "You just see a pretty face, and you don't know the devil that lurks behind that mask."

"Ma'am, I don't know what you're talking about, but—" Clarke started, and Lexa wanted to grab her, to put a hand over her mouth and shut her up, because she _didn't_ know, and she was going to defend her anyway, and...

"She's a murderer," Mrs. Walker snapped. "She killed my little girl, and if you don't watch yourself, she'll kill you, too!"

That stopped Clarke... for about half a second. But then she looked right at Mrs. Walker. "What the hell are you talking about?" But she didn't sound confused. She sounded angry. 

"Clarke, _please_ ," Lexa begged. "Please go."

Clarke shook her head. "I'm not—"

"I can handle this myself! Just go!" She didn't even try to make it sound like she was doing anything but pleading with her, and by some miracle, Clarke actually took a step back and away. 

"Are you sure?" Clarke asked.

Lexa nodded sharply. 

"I'll see you later?"

"Go!"

Clarke went. With obvious misgiving and more than one backward glance, Clarke went, leaving Lexa alone with the woman who had done everything in her power to make her life a living hell after Costia's death. And could she really blame her?

"Mrs. Walker," Lexa said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your loss. I miss her too." _All day, every day, so much it was starting to drive me crazy._

"Oh do you?" Mrs. Walker spat. "Do you really? Because it doesn't look like it." She was looking in the direction Clarke had gone, the look in her eyes an accusation. "It looks like you've just moved right on."

"It's not like that," Lexa said. "She's a friend. She—"

"People like you don't know how to have just friends. People like you are predators. I knew there was something wrong with you the very first time I set eyes on you, and for a little while you had me starting to think otherwise, but that's what the devil does, isn't it? Puts on the guise of an angel and then once it has wormed its way in, reveals its true nature."

"I am not the devil," Lexa said. "I know—" She stopped herself. She didn't know. She didn't know what it was like for a mother to lose a child. She had known Costia for less than two years. Her mother had known her all nineteen years of it, had had hopes and dreams for her from the moment she was born, and all of that had ended far too soon, and she blamed Lexa for it.

In her eyes, Lexa had killed her daughter, and although it wasn't true, there was an element of truth to it. Because if Costia had never met her, had never fallen in love with her (and they had been in love, they _had_ , no matter what Costia's mother wanted to believe), had never decided to come visit her last summer...

"I didn't ask her to come," Lexa said. "I didn't ask her to visit me. I actually asked her - _told_ her – not to. I told her that it wasn't a good idea. I told her that I would try to come see her, or that we could maybe both get away and go somewhere, but..." She swallowed hard, her throat aching and her eyes burning. "I told her not to come."

"And you think that absolves you?" Mrs. Walker demanded. "You think that washes the blood from your hands?"

"No," Lexa said. "No. I should have..." The words caught in her throat and wouldn't come out. _I should have kept her safe. I should have been with her. If it had to be one of us, it should have been me._

But it wasn't. Obviously. They'd fought, and Costia had walked away, caught up in her own world like she got sometimes, especially when she was angry, headphones in to drown the world out, so that she could go on believing that the world would shape itself to be the way she wanted it... but it didn't. Not that night. And she'd died because of it.

"You should never have come near her," Mrs. Walker accused, her finger out. She jabbed at Lexa's chest with it, and Lexa took it, absorbing it because she deserved it. Everything this woman said, every accusation that she hurled, she deserved it, even if they weren't the whole truth. She had played a part in her lover's death, however indirect, and this was her punishment. "She had a good life, and you came along and you _ruined_ it."

"I'm sorry," Lexa said. "I never meant for any of it to happen."

"She would be alive right now if it wasn't for you."

"I know," Lexa said. There was no point in trying to deny it. 

"And I will make sure that you pay for that, every day of your life," she hissed. 

Lexa's stomach clenched. "If I could change things," she said, her voice coming out choked, barely more than a whisper. "If I could do it all over again... I would stay away. And if I couldn't stay away, if I couldn't..." She took a breath, let it out, fighting back panic that she'd thought she'd finally conquered. "If I could take her place, Mrs. Walker, I would. If she could live and could die in her place, I would do it in a second. She was better than me, always, in all ways, and she didn't deserve to die, and I—"

"And yet here you still are," Mrs. Walker said. "Living your life as if nothing happened."

"What do you want me to do?" Lexa demanded. "I can't go back in time and change it!"

"You already know what I want you to do," Mrs. Walker said. 

"I have to go," Lexa said, and she turned and ran – literally ran – away, her backpack bumping against her back, elbowing people out of her way when they didn't move and not caring. She knew she should go to class, but she didn't. She couldn't. She went home and shut herself in her room.

She pulled out her phone – not the one she used now, but the one she'd had last summer, the one Anya had replaced – and scrolled through the text messages that she should have deleted, but she'd never been able to make herself push that button.

She knew exactly what Mrs. Walker wanted her to do. She was just too much of a coward to do it.


	45. Clarke

Anya opened the door and immediately stepped aside, letting Clarke in. "She's in her room."

Clarke paused unwinding her scarf and looked at her. "How did you know I was here for her?" She decided she probably deserved the eyeroll that she got in response. "I went to find her after class to see if she was okay, but she wasn't there."

"She came home," Anya said. "I'm not sure she even noticed I was here, to be honest. She just went straight to her room."

"Is she...?" Clarke asked. 

"Okay?" Anya frowned. "I've seen her worse."

"That's not really reassuring," Clarke said.

"It wasn't meant to be." Anya's frown deepened, and she crossed her arms, not like she was angry but almost like she was hugging herself, or trying to hold something in. "Maybe she'll talk to you, though."

Now it was Clarke who frowned... more than she already had been. "She won't talk to you?"

"I didn't try," Anya said. "I'm not the one—" She stopped. "Let her tell you. I think she might."

"But you know?"

Anya nodded. 

Clarke hung up her coat and went to Lexa's door, glancing back at Anya once, but she had already gone back to whatever she was doing, or at least made it seem like she had. Clarke got the feeling that she wouldn't be able to concentrate on whatever it was until whatever was going to happen when Clarke knocked happened.

She hesitated a second longer, then knocked. "Lexa? It's Clarke."

No response. She knocked again. Maybe she was sleeping? 

"Should I...?" Clarke asked, motioning to the doorknob. 

Anya looked at her. "I'm not going to stop you."

"She's really..." Clarke stepped away from the door, back into the living room. "She didn't tell you what happened today?"

"No," Anya said. 

"But you said you knew."

"I don't know the specifics of today," Anya said. "But I know that there's pretty much only one thing that can put her in full retreat like this. I also know that there are plenty of things that can set her off."

"There was a woman saying—" The words seemed so surreal, and Clarke knew she hadn't misheard them but some part of her wanted to believe that she had. "Saying that Lexa was a devil, that I was her next victim, that Lexa had murdered—"

At that Anya's eyes widened, and a long string of words that Clarke didn't understand came out of her mouth. She didn't need to know the language, though, to understand that Anya wasn't saying anything nice. She got up off the couch and went to Lexa's door, not even bothering to knock, just turning the knob and pushing it open, disappearing inside.

She wasn't gone long – a minute or two, maybe, maybe not even that – and then she came back out again. "Go on," she said. "Just don't try to _make_ her talk."

"Okay," Clarke said, and went in.

The room was dim; Lexa hadn't bothered to turn on a light and the sun was almost set. She was laying on her bed, curled on her side with her knees pulled nearly all the way up to her chest. She was red-eyed but not crying. Not anymore, anyway. 

Clarke walked over and sat on the edge of the bed, reaching out to touch her because she didn't know what to say, especially not with Anya's admonition against trying to force her to say anything. (Not that she thought anyone could actually _force_ Lexa to do or say anything she didn't want to.) She stroked back the hair from her temple, letting her fingers linger there. Her hair was damp, from sweat or tears dripping down her face. "Rough day," she said softly. Not a question.

She didn't expect that Lexa would laugh, or almost laugh. A catching of her breath, maybe closer to a sob than a laugh, but at least it got her to look at Clarke. "Just a little."

"I came to find you after class."

"I couldn't... after that. I couldn't go."

"I doubt I could have either," Clarke said. "That was brutal, and I wasn't even there for all of it. Unless you walked away?"

Another sound that was not a laugh, but not not a laugh, this one tinged with bitterness. "I wish I could." Her lips pursed and a line formed between her brows. "No. I don't mean that. I don't think I do." 

"I think you lost me," Clarke said.

"Sorry." Lexa pushed herself to sitting, and they were close enough that Clarke could feel the heat from her skin, and for a second she thought that Lexa was going to lean into her, but then she was getting up, going to her desk and opening a drawer, coming back.

She handed a framed picture to Clarke. "Her name was Costia."

Clarke looked down and saw a photo of two girls with their arms around each other. One was looking straight at the camera, wild-haired and dark-eyed, flush-cheeked and caught in the middle of laughing. The other was Lexa, who wasn't looking at the camera at all. Instead, she was looking at the other girl – Costia – in a way that made Clarke think she might not have even known the picture was being taken, or even that anything outside of the girl next to her existed. She was smiling, in the way you smiled when you were in love with someone and thought no one was watching.

"She's beautiful," Clarke said.

"She was," Lexa agreed. "Now she's dead."

It seemed impossible. Someone that vibrant, that _alive_ even in a single still frame, couldn't be dead. But Lexa didn't say things she didn't mean, and why would she lie about it? "I'm sorry."

"So am I."

The words were so flat, so final, it felt like the world was shrinking around them, and the room was almost dark now. Clarke longed to get up and turn on the light, but she was sure that if she did, the moment would be shattered, and whatever Lexa was trying to say would never come out. 

"She was... When Costia decided she wanted something, she got it," Lexa said. "There was no point in arguing with her, because you were never going to win. It was one of the best things about her... and one of the worst. When the food pantry was gearing up for the holidays and they weren't sure they were going to have enough, she organized a food drive, and I swear everyone in the school contributed. You didn't dare not." The faintest hint of a smile tugged at the corners of Lexa's lips. "But then at the end of last year... my father had been moved again while I was at school, so going home for me didn't mean the same thing as going home for her anymore. And she didn't like that. She tried to get her parents to agree to let her get an apartment – presumably with me – but they said no. They were the only ones who ever said no to her that she listened to, and then only sometimes. So she decided that at the very least she was going to come visit me."

Lexa tensed, seeming to pull herself inward as if she could protect herself from what she knew was going to happen, even if it was only in retelling. "I told her not to. I told her that it wasn't a good idea. I told her that I would come see her, I promised, or we could plan a trip to somewhere – anywhere – that wasn't a military base. She didn't listen. She decided to surprise me. And maybe it would have been all right, if..." She swallowed hard, and Clarke wanted to touch her, had the almost irresistible urge to reach out and take her hand, to try and ease this for her somehow, but it didn't think it was possible, really, and she didn't want to spook her. "She wanted to go out. She said she'd done research, found a place, that it would be fine, that there was always _somewhere_ for people like us, even in the middle of nowhere. Maybe she had, maybe there was, but... she didn't understand. She thought that if she just believed hard enough that the world was a certain way that it would be. Or maybe she just really didn't understand that not everywhere is like where she grew up. But she... We ended up fighting about it, about the fact that two girls couldn't be _together_ in public everywhere. She called me a coward, told me if I loved her—"

Clarke didn't realize she'd been holding her breath until the need for air became so great it was painful. "If you loved her?"

"I don't deal well with ultimatums," Lexa said softly. "She told me to get out. I went. I thought she just needed time to cool off and we'd sort it out in the morning. I went home. I guess she decided to go anyway, to this place, this bar that we weren't even old enough to get into, on her own, and when she was angry she would lose track of everything else, she would be in her own little world, and she wasn't paying attention and he was drunk and driving too fast and... I wasn't there. If I had been, maybe I could have—" 

_Saved her._ It didn't take a genius to fill in the blank. But if she's been there...

"Maybe you would be dead, too," Clarke said.

Lexa looked at her, frowning, her forehead furrowed like what Clarke had said made no sense at all. "I never..." She looked back at the picture. "I never thought about that. I thought that maybe he would have killed me instead. If one of us had to die, it should have been me. But it never occurred to me that if I'd been there, both of us might be dead."

Clarke shivered. As horrible as what had happened was for Lexa, for her, right now in this moment, the idea of Lexa being dead was worse. Even though she never would have met her, never would have known her, if she'd been killed last summer... some part of her felt like she would still somehow know that she was missing something. 

Which was a ridiculous thought, more appropriate to YA novels than reality. Maybe it was just dark memories in a dark room. 

"That woman... that was her mother." Lexa traced her finger over the edge of the frame. "She hates me."

"I... kinda got that," Clarke said. 

"She blames me for Costia's death." She looked at Clarke then, but her gaze went almost immediately back to the picture, and Clarke's did too. It seemed rude to stare. 

"I got that, too."

"She was content to let it go with the police, because to try to pursue it as anything but accidental might have meant it coming to light that her daughter was dating a girl, that she'd been killed in front of a gay bar. Because she was right there. Costia. She was crossing the street right in front of the bar..."

"It's—" Clarke started to say, but it wasn't okay. It wasn't anything even remotely like okay, and saying that it was...

Lexa didn't seem to hear her. "She tried to ignore it, tried to pretend, but she knew, and she hated it, hated me, and after... it only got worse." Lexa reached over to her nightstand and picked up a phone, pushed the button to light up the screen, and handed it to Clarke.

_You killed her._

_You should have died instead._

_Murderer._

_If there was any justice in the world, you would be dead._

Text after text after text condemning her, ending in a string that seemed never-ending, all variations on a passive aggressive theme that never came right out and said it but the message was clear: 

_Kill yourself._


	46. Lexa

The minute she saw the look on Clarke's face, she knew she'd made a mistake. She reached for the phone to take it back, but Clarke shifted her hand to put it, if not completely out of reach, far enough away that Lexa would have to really invade her personal space to get it. "Did you show these to the police?"

"Why would I do that?" Lexa asked, even though Anya had wanted to do the same thing back when it had happened. "It doesn't mean anything. She was just grieving. Do you think that your mother would do any different if she thought someone was responsible for your death?"

Another mistake. Right. Saying something that could be potentially construed as insulting about someone's mother was pretty much a bad idea. Especially when you don't know the person very well, and even more especially when you don't know the mother in question at all. 

"No," Clarke said. "My mother would never do this. Not... no." She shook her head. "I understand that she was hurt, grieving, lashing out, and that's understandable, maybe, but it doesn't make it okay. You were grieving too."

_I wasn't,_ Lexa thought, but she couldn't say that. _I was too numb to grieve at the time. I was too convinced that it all had to be some kind of mistake, that if I just waited long enough Costia would jump out of somewhere and yell, 'Gotcha!' and it would all be okay._

"Why did you keep them?" Clarke asked. "Why didn't you delete them?"

Lexa shrugged. She didn't know. Or she did know, but she also knew that saying it would only draw more incredulous, appalled looks from Clarke, and she didn't want that. She wanted to go back in time five minutes, or ten, or however long they had been sitting here, and take it all back. 

"You can't do this to yourself," Clarke said. "This isn't healthy." She looked down at the phone again, and then before Lexa quite realized what she was doing, before she could reach out and grab the phone away, she had tapped out of the text history and swiped across, deleting the whole string of messages in one stroke.

Lexa snatched the phone back, staring at it and tapping on the screen in a futile attempt to retrieve the messages. But they were gone. She knew they were. "What the hell did you do that for?" she demanded. "You can't just erase it, just like that! It doesn't work that way!"

Clarke got up, marched across the room and flipped on the light. "I know it doesn't work that way," she snapped back, "and I'm not trying to erase it all. But I'm not going to let you sit here in the dark and torture yourself anymore." She glared at Lexa, her arms crossed over her chest. "Maybe I don't know what it feels like to lose a child, but I do know what it feels like to lose someone you love, and... and it doesn't give you the right to try to destroy someone else. Someone else who loved them just as much as you did. That's... she had no right, and I can't let you. I..." 

The words came out fragmented, and Clarke's voice was thick like she was trying to swallow back tears. Tears for her, Lexa wondered, or for herself? 

"Who did you lose, Clarke?" Lexa asked, her voice barely a whisper.

"My father," Clarke said. "Two years ago."

"I'm sorry," Lexa said, getting up and closing the space between them, close enough that they could touch if either of them reached out, but they were both frozen, Lexa looking at Clarke, and Clarke looking past or through her.

"Me too."

Lexa made herself lift her hand, made herself touch Clarke's arm, and that was all it took. Suddenly the girl was in her arms, and they clung to each other, breathing ragged but tears in check, and Lexa thought maybe the heartbeat she felt pounding against her chest wasn't her own. Her fingers tangled in Clarke's hair as she cradled the back of her head, as Clarke's face pressed into the curve of her neck, her breath warm on Lexa's skin.

Seconds ticked by, maybe a minute or more, and then they pulled apart as if by mutual agreement, wiping at the corners of their eyes, looking anywhere but at each other until they were composed again. 

"I'm sorry you had to see that," Lexa said finally. "With Mrs. Walker." She bit the inside of her lip. "I'm not sorry that it forced me to tell you."

"I'm not sorry either," Clarke said. "It... now I know what's haunting you."

"It shows?"

"Sometimes," Clarke said, but Lexa was pretty sure that 'sometimes' meant 'a lot'. Then again, she'd always had a hard time keeping her walls up around Clarke, for reasons she wasn't really ready or willing to examine. 

Lexa nodded, because what else could she do? She had no idea what to say now. There was more to the story, because there was always more to the story, and maybe she should ask about Clarke's father, but she figured that Clarke would tell her when she was ready. Maybe she had already worked through it, and digging it up would just be picking at wounds that had already turned to scars and started to fade. 

"Do you want to stay for dinner?" she asked finally, because it was the only thing she could think of... and because suddenly the idea of Clarke deciding it was time to leave was more than she could handle. "Anya always cooks more than the two of us can eat anyway."

"No," Clarke said, and Lexa's heart sank.

"Oh. I guess I should let you go then."

"No," Clarke said. "I mean – why don't I cook for your tonight? You and Anya. She's fed me enough times, I should at least return the favor."

"Do you know _how_ to cook?" Lexa asked, and she meant it as a serious question, but Clarke laughed. 

"Only a few things, but yes. What do you like on your pizza?" 

"Anything but cooked peppers," Lexa said. "And I'm not a big fan of onion on pizza, either. Or olives."

"So... really not 'anything' at all," Clarke said, grinning. "Got it. No peppers, onions, or olives. Or anchovies, because fish on pizza is disgusting, and pineapple is a little weird, too. Not that I don't love pineapple – I do – but not on pizza."

"Anya is boring," Lexa said. "She only eats cheese pizza."

"Are you serious? Not even pepperoni?"

"Not even pepperoni."

"But she's not a vegetarian," Clarke said. "I know that."

"I know. She just has this... thing about it."

"Well, it is a little horrifying if you think too much – and by too much I mean at all – about what's in it. But fine. One cheese pizza, one with pepperoni. Or sausage. Or both. I guess this means I have to run to the store."

"I guess so," Lexa agreed. 

"I'll be right back," Clarke said. "I promise."

She nodded, and watched Clarke go. She heard her tell Anya that she would be back, and not to start dinner because she was cooking, and then the door opened and closed and she was gone.

Lexa stepped out of her room, going straight across the hall to the bathroom because she wasn't quite ready to face Anya yet. She looked at herself in the mirror, and it seemed strange that her face was no different now than it had been this morning when she'd woken up. It felt like it ought to be, like somehow the confession should have changed something in her enough that it would be visible. She _felt_ different, a little. Ripped open and raw, but that was Mrs. Walker's doing. Because of Clarke, she felt... lighter, maybe. Like there was more room in her lungs now to breathe.

She shut off the light and went into the living room, sitting on the opposite end of the couch from Anya and pulling up her legs underneath her.

"She's making us dinner?"

"That's what she says," Lexa said. "Pizza."

"She can make pizza?"

"Apparently."

Anya raised an eyebrow, but she was smiling. Or maybe smirking. It faded a second later. "You told her."

Lexa nodded.

"That must have been hard."

"Not as hard as I thought it would be," Lexa said. There was a long pause, and for a second Lexa thought maybe the conversation was over, but she wasn't sure she was ready for it to be. "I showed her the text messages."

Anya looked at her sharply. "You still have them?"

"I did."

"I told you to delete them!"

"No, you told me that we should show them to the police," Lexa said. "But they would have taken the whole phone as evidence, probably, and I wasn't going to press charges anyway." A pause, a breath. "They're gone now."

"You finally deleted them?"

"No. Clarke did."

Anya smirked. "I knew I liked that girl."

"I was angry, at first, but I guess maybe I'm just relieved."

Anya reached over and put her hand on Lexa's knee, squeezed. "It's going to get better," she said. "If you let it."

Lexa looked toward the door, where Clarke had gone but which she would walk back through, sooner rather than later. "It already has."


	47. Clarke

Clarke poked the buzzer to Lexa's place, because there wasn't a neighbor conveniently coming home who she could sneak in after like she had the first time. She managed to snag the handle before it stopped buzzing in response (without a voice through the intercom asking who it was, even, but maybe it was just because she'd already told them that she was coming back? After what had happened that day, she would have thought they would have been pretty cautious about who they were letting into the building. 

She swore as she juggled the bags while trying to get her shoes off, until Lexa stepped out and took them. She held the door open for Clarke as she lined her shoes up with all the rest. "What's with the shoe thing, anyway?" she asked. "Is it just so stuff doesn't get tracked on the carpet, or...?"

"It's a cultural thing," Lexa said. "There are a lot of cultures where it's considered rude to wear your shoes into the house. And it also saves the carpet." 

"Huh." Clarke could see where that would make some sense. "I guess I never really thought about it. For me, it feels a little weird, walking around someone else's place in my socks. It feels almost... intimate. Which obviously it's not, but..." She shrugged.

"Some houses will keep guest slippers at the door, so that people can at least have _something_ on their feet other than just socks," Lexa said. "Maybe we should do that. We don't usually have a lot of visitors, so we hadn't really thought about it."

The thought crossed Clarke's mind that the way that Lexa said it made it sound like they – Lexa and Anya, not Lexa and Clarke – were a couple, who made these kinds of decisions together. But she was pretty sure that wasn't the case; that wasn't really the vibe she got from them. And if they were, wouldn't Lexa be a little more... over Costia? You couldn't be that deep in grief and move on at the same time, could you?

She sure as hell couldn't ask. She didn't want to make things awkward between them, any more than they already were.

Except they weren't, really, were they? They had been at first, maybe, but not really anymore. Lexa had just told her about her dead ex-girlfriend, after all, and that had a tendency to erase awkwardness. Although in hindsight, it could have significantly increased it, but that would have been more likely if they were more than friends, Clarke thought. Which they weren't. Obviously. 

And did someone count as an ex if the reason you aren't together anymore is because the person is dead? They hadn't broken up. They'd had a disagreement, Lexa had said, but they hadn't broken up before Costia got killed. So did she count as an ex? Probably not. But it wasn't like they were going to get back together. Even if she hadn't yet, eventually Lexa would have to move on, right?

Except what if she didn't? Not that it was any of Clarke's business. Not that mattered to her on a personal level. But even thinking about the idea that this girl – this beautiful, vital, intense girl – would just give up on ever connecting to another person because she'd lost someone once...

She shivered, as if that would somehow shake the thought.

"Cold?" Lexa asked. "Neither of us likes to be overly warm, so I know the place is colder than a lot of people would keep it." She smiled crookedly. "It also keeps the bill down. Here." She disappeared for a minute, and reappeared a minute later with a hoodie, handing it to Clarke. 

Clarke looked at it – it was a maroon-ish color, and well worn, almost to the point of fraying at the cuffs – then slipped it on. "Thanks," she said, resisting the urge to bury her nose in it to see if it smelled like Lexa. Because that would be weird. And why did it matter what it smelled like, anyway?

"You're welcome," Lexa said. 

"I got pans," Clarke said. "Pizza pans. I didn't know if you had any, and I like the ones with the holes that let more heat actually get to the dough, because it makes for a crisper pizza, although you have to be careful that the dough doesn't actually go through the holes and cook that way, because then it's a pain in the ass getting it off. I also got some cooking spray, because I wasn't sure if you had it. It occurred to me once I was already there that I probably should have asked about that before I left, but I figured it doesn't really go bad, and if you already have pizza pans I can keep these, although I won't be able to use them in the dorms, but eventually—" She stopped. "Sorry. I'm babbling, aren't I?"

She could feel her cheeks growing hot. Why did she suddenly feel nervous? Or like she needed to impress Lexa? It was stupid, and it was making her weird, and the last thing Lexa needed right now was weird. 

But Lexa was smiling, and although it still barely shifted the shape of her lips, it lit up her eyes, and Clarke found herself lost in them for a second. And then the smile dimmed, and Lexa looked away. "Thank you," she said, "for coming back."

"I wasn't going to promise to make you dinner and then just disappear," Clarke said, but Lexa was shaking her head even before she finished.

"Most people would have run away today," Lexa said. "You didn't. Even after I made you leave... you came back."

"I had to know you were okay," Clarke said. "Or as close to okay as anyone can be, given the circumstances. No one – no one has the right to treat anyone else like that. And I'm not going to stand by and let someone say things like that to one of my friends and not say anything." 

Lexa nodded. "Even so, thank you."

"You're welcome," Clarke said. She started putting things out on the counter, setting the oven to preheat before putting the pizza pans out and pulling ingredients from her shopping bags. "Do you want to help?"

"Yes," Lexa said, and came around to the other side of the breakfast bar so that she could assist. 

Clarke made sure that both pans were sprayed, then handed Lexa one of the lumps of dough. "Just try to get it as even as you can," she said. 

They worked mostly in silence, because making pizza wasn't exactly rocket science and once the dough was stretched onto the pan it was pretty self-explanatory. Once both pizzas were done, they got them into the oven and Lexa set the timer. 

"This is the worst part," Clarke said. "I get really impatient."

"You're the person who always takes a bite out of their pizza when it's practically straight out of the oven and then complains when they burn the roof of their mouth on the cheese, aren't you?" Lexa asked, and her tone was – if Clarke wasn't mistaken - _teasing_. 

"Sometimes," Clarke admitted. "I try to find something else to do long enough to give it time to cool so I don't, but it doesn't always work." 

Again, that smile, which was a lot closer to a full smile than she'd seen from Lexa before, and was it strange that she was smiling now, after she'd been put through the wringer earlier in the day by a woman who really seemed to think that she would be better off dead, and that the world would be a better, safer place without her?

But maybe... maybe just talking about it helped? She hadn't believed it when she'd been dealing with her father's death, that it could, but that had usually been people getting up in her face and trying to _make_ her talk about it, and she hadn't been ready and they hadn't been the right people, and...

... and she was the right person for Lexa? Shouldn't that be Anya, or someone who had known her for longer than a few weeks? Didn't she have other friends?

If she did, Clarke had never seen them. Other than Anya, and maybe some of the people that she trained with, it seemed like Lexa pretty much kept to herself, and maybe not entirely because she wanted to. 

She wanted to ask, but she didn't, because she didn't want to be the kind of person that she had hated so much. "Where did Anya go? Was she really that scared of the idea of someone else cooking?"

Lexa laughed – actually laughed, and that was definitely something Clarke hadn't heard from her before. "She's just in her room," she said. "She went to lay down. Said she had a headache from reading some of the most badly researched, sloppily written essays she had ever had the misfortune of reading, and if she thought she could get away with it, she would fail every single person."

Clarke grimaced. "I hope she hadn't gotten to mine," she said. "I thought I did okay."

"She _may_ have been exaggerating," Lexa said. 

"Here's hoping," Clarke said. "If not, then I'll have to hope that they're graded on a curve."

"I've never understood that," Lexa said. "It no one did A-level work, no one should get an A."

"Says the girl who was probably always the curve-breaker," Clarke replied.

Lexa snorted. "In eleventh grade I was taking twelfth grade math," she said. "My teacher always posted our results on a bulletin board, but the list was by our student ID number, not by our names. And I never actually knew what my student ID number was, because for some bizarre reason, it wasn't actually on our student IDs. Because that would make way too much sense. So I would just wait for someone to say, 'Who the hell got a 98?' or whatever it was. And that was how I knew my score."

"See?" But Clarke couldn't help laughing. She could imagine Lexa – in her mental picture looking younger than she probably actually had, given the fact that it would have only been a few years ago – sitting there trying not to look smug as the rest of the class grumbled over their scores. Not because she took any pleasure in their misfortune, but just because she was the best. 

Eventually, the timer beeped, and they pulled the pizzas from the oven. Lexa got out plates and napkins and went to get Anya while Clarke sliced it into wedges. They ate in front of the TV, which seemed to be the habit here even though there was a table, and finally she checked her phone and saw that she had half a dozen text messages from Octavia, who was increasingly alarmed by her lack of response and the fact that she hadn't seen her since they left their room together that morning.

'I'm fine,' she texted back to her. 'Long story. Long day. Home soon.'

"I should go," she said. "Thank you for letting me cook for you. It was fun."

"You're welcome back any time," Anya said. "It's nice to get a break once in a while."

"I offer!" Lexa protested.

"Yes," Anya said, "but I've eaten your cooking."

"It's not that bad," Lexa said. "And you can't judge a person by how they cook over an open fire."

"Oh, believe me, you can," Anya said. "Drive safe, Clarke."

"Yes," Lexa echoed. 

"Good night, Lexa," Clarke said. Lexa followed her out into the hall, and for a strange second Clarke waited as if this was a date and she wasn't sure whether it was going to end with a kiss or not. 

"Good night, Clarke," Lexa said, and stayed in the doorway watching as she went. 

It was only when she got back to the dorm and steeled herself for the third degree from Octavia that she realized that she was still wearing Lexa's hoodie. She didn't think it likely that Lexa had forgotten she was wearing it, which meant she'd chosen not to ask for it back.

And now Clarke chose not to let herself ask why. She just turned her head slightly, pressing her cheek against the material. Which did smell like Lexa after all.


	48. Lexa

For a second, Lexa had had the urge to kiss Clarke. For a second, it had almost seemed like Clarke was waiting for her to do just that. But she hadn't, and Clarke had finally said goodnight and left, and now she was standing in the doorway, feeling...

She didn't know what she was feeling. She just knew that she was, and she wasn't sure that she liked it. 

When she'd gone abroad, she'd still been numb. It was like when you cut yourself with something so sharp that you don't even notice that your skin is split until suddenly the blood wells up, and even that takes a couple of seconds. She'd wrapped the wound in bandages so tight that the blood couldn't escape, and she'd told herself that she was fine.

What choice did she have, thousands of miles away from home (a word with no meaning anymore) and with no support system? She talked to her father once every two weeks, like clockwork, in the evening for her and the morning for him, because of the time difference, but that was mostly just so he could check in and make sure that she was going to class and that her grades weren't slipping. If they did, he might just make her come back to the States and do what he had been so disappointed she hadn't done in the first place – enlist.

Anya had contacted her more frequently, but she had been respectful of Lexa's boundaries for the most part, and it had been good not to be pushed, but at the same time, it almost made it feel awkward when she thought maybe she did want to say something about everything that had happened. So she just didn't, and kept pretending that she was fine, and she managed to keep up the act long enough that she actually started to believe it.

But the semester wound down and she had to start thinking about what she was going to do after, and she'd looked into continuing with school in Australia, but it would have been a whole mess with visas and whatnot, and she'd thought about just booking a flight to somewhere, anywhere, that they'd never been together, somewhere where no one had ever known them... but in the end she'd come back. In the end, she'd let Anya bring her home.

And somewhere along the line, it had actually started to _feel_ like home. Not the first night, or the second, or even the first week. She wasn't sure when it had actually changed. It hadn't been a single moment, like the flipping of a switch. Just a slow, gradual thing that maybe just came of building a routine with another person. 

Because everyone in the military, or in the family of someone in the military, had to learn pretty fast that home wasn't a place. Home was people, the people who stayed with you no matter where you went. And Anya had become one of those people.

"Are you just going to stand there all night?" Anya asked. "Because you're letting cold air in."

Lexa stepped back inside and shut the door. "I'll clean up," she said, and went to the kitchen to do so. Not that they'd left it a big mess; Clarke had actually done most of the cleaning while they were waiting for the pizzas to cook. 

She could feel Anya's eyes on her as she moved around the kitchen, and when she finally finished she went back out into the living room. "What?"

"It's good to see you smile again," Anya said. "It's been a while."

"I'm not smiling," Lexa said.

"You were," Anya said. "You were in the kitchen, smiling to yourself."

Had she been? She hadn't noticed. She frowned now, and Anya sighed. 

"It's a good thing," she said. "I know it's been hard for you, coming back. And having Costia's mother show up like that, out of nowhere..." Anya shook her head. "I hope that's the end of it, that she's got it out of her system."

"I hope so too," Lexa said. "I want to be able to remember something other than how it ended for once."

"I want you to be able to, too," Anya said, and there was something... not quite dark, but heavy in the words. Lexa wasn't sure exactly what it was, and she wasn't sure she wanted to know. Maybe she _had_ been smiling to herself. In spite of everything, she was actually in a pretty good mood. She felt better – lighter – than she had in eight months. 

"I've got some reading to do," Lexa said. "Good luck with the papers."

"Thanks," Anya replied. "I'll need it."

Lexa went into her room, and she did get out her school books, and even opened up to the right page, but she couldn't focus on the words. Her eyes kept drifting to the picture that she'd gotten out to show Clarke, and which now stood propped on her nightstand. Had she set it there like that, or had Clarke? 

She remembered that day. It had been around this time last year, and it had snowed (which didn't happen all that often this far down the coast), and they'd all gone out to play in it. One of their friends had slipped and had been flailing to keep his balance just as the picture had been taken, and Costia had been laughing, and Lexa had been too caught up in Costia to even notice right away. (For that matter, she had been the one to help their poor hapless friend up, because everyone had been too busy wheezing with mirth.)

It had been a good day. They had had a lot of good days. They had had some not so good days, too, because they were two different – sometimes _very_ different – people, and they hadn't always been on the same page about everything. They were also both stubborn, and it generally was a less than ideal combination. But they'd loved each other, and they'd managed to work things out... or sometimes one or the other of them (usually Lexa) would just give up on trying to persuade the other, because it just wasn't worth fighting over.

_I miss you,_ Lexa thought, looking at the picture. _Every day, I miss you._

Maybe if she believed in an afterlife it would be easier, but she didn't. Once you were dead, you were dead, and that was the end of it. On a scientific level, she could maybe take a little bit of comfort in the fact that energy could not be created or destroyed, and whatever energy had animated Costia would return back to the universe... but that didn't mean that _she_ would return. 

Which was something else they'd disagreed on. Costia had been raised... not rabidly religious, but she'd gone to church, and she'd been spiritual, if not... what? Godly? She'd believed in a higher power that drove the universe, even if she'd accepted that that power probably hadn't created the world out of nothing in six days. (Because on the seventh day he rested – and Costia had taken issue with the fact that God was referred to as He, and that had been a rather spectacular dinnertime argument with her parents that Lexa had had the misfortune of witnessing and almost certainly being blamed for.) 

She'd believed in reincarnation, too, thinking it was a logical balance between the scientific and the spiritual. If energy couldn't be created or destroyed, than the energy of a person would find its way back into the form of another person at some point. It wasn't enough that a body would become fertilizer for grass and flowers which would become food for animals which would become food for other animals, or food for people (who were just the animals at the top of the food chain, at least here), and the cycle went on. 

And she believed in soulmates. She believed that two souls could find each other over and over again as they were reincarnated, that they were meant to be together and maybe they wouldn't always find each other, but when they did...

What Lexa had never had the courage to ask was whether Costia actually thought that Lexa was her soulmate. She was afraid that she would say no, but more afraid that she would say yes, but not really mean it. And she was _terrified_ that she would say yes, and mean it, and Lexa would be left wondering if it was some kind of failing on her part that she didn't feel it. 

She loved Costia. She did. But if soulmates really were a thing, if two people were destined to be together no matter what, across all time and space, and they would never feel completely whole without the other, shouldn't she feel that? Shouldn't it feel like everything was good and nothing else could touch her happiness, as long as she had Costia? And it had, sometimes, but not enough. 

_I wish I'd asked,_ she thought, because if she actually started talking to her out loud, Anya might hear and think she'd finally lost it for good. _If you said no, maybe it would be easier to let you go._

But it didn't matter what the answer was, because she was going to have to find a way to let Costia go even if they had been meant for each other. Because Costia was gone from this life, and Lexa still had to live it for another fifty, sixty, seventy years. And that would be a very, very long time if she tried to do it alone.

_You'll always be my first love,_ she told Costia, who of course couldn't hear except maybe somehow she could. _You'll always be the first one who got through all the walls I'd built up and touched my heart. You helped shape who I am, and you made me the happiest I'd ever been. But I think maybe it's time for me to start moving on. Only I'm not... I can't... I don't know how. How do I let you go?_

There was no answer. Of course.

Lexa left the picture on her nightstand. Getting the story out in the open had made it hurt a little less. Maybe it was time to stop locking it all away. Maybe, somehow, if she just let herself remember, she would get the answer she sought.

She didn't get any reading done that night. She flipped through the pictures on her old phone, the ones that she couldn't bring herself to pull over to her new phone but that she didn't want to lose. Costia, and Costia, and Costia again. Tears slid down her cheeks, and she finally closed her eyes, and as she wiped them away with her sleeve she imagined it was someone else doing it.

Not herself.

Not Costia.

Not even Anya.

Guilt crashed over her like a wave.

She didn't sleep much that night.


	49. Clarke

"Come on," Octavia said. "Get up, get dressed. We're going out."

Clarke looked up from the book she'd been reading, or trying to read anyway. She had read the same paragraph three times now because her mind kept sliding away from the words. "I _am_ dressed," she said.

Octavia rolled her eyes. "Put on something _nice_ ," she said. "We're going _out_."

"Where?" Clarke asked, sticking an index card in the book to mark her page and setting it aside. "I don't—"

"I don't care if you want to go out or not," Octavia told her. "I am sick of you sitting around moping. It's boring. It's Friday night, and we're going out."

"I'm not _moping,_ " Clarke protested, although in the back of her head she had to acknowledge that maybe Octavia had a point. Kind of. Possibly. A little. She hadn't been moping, exactly, but she hadn't been particularly social, either. Since the day of The Confrontation, after she left Lexa and Anya's place, she'd barely heard from her. She still texted back when Clarke said good night, but other than that, they hadn't seen each other or spoken. She'd been thinking about going over there again, just to make sure that Lexa was okay.

But maybe Octavia was right. Maybe she needed to go out and actually have some _fun_. 

She got up and went to her closet. "Where are we going?" she asked. "So I know what to wear."

"A party," Octavia said. 

Now Clarke was the one rolling her eyes. She couldn't tell if her roommate was being deliberately vague or if she really thought that that was a good enough answer. "Whose party?"

"Some frat," Octavia said. 

Clarke's stomach clenched, and her jaw with it. "Which one?"

"I don't know," Octavia said. "It's all Greek to me." She turned and flashed Clarke a grin, and was rewarded with a pillow to the face. She screeched and hurled it back, hitting Clarke square in the chest. If it had been anything harder than a pillow, she might have had the wind knocked out of her. 

"Not Bell's," Octavia added, while Clarke was still stunned silent by the force O had managed to put behind the throw. "Don't worry."

Just because it wasn't his frat didn't mean that Finn wouldn't show up, Clarke thought, but she didn't say it. Some fraternities got along, and some seemed to have some kind of rivalry between them that kept them from attending each other's parties. Clarke would just have to hope it was one of those, because she really didn't feel like dealing with him. 

She hadn't seen him much that week, but she still wasn't fully convinced that he was done with her. "I'm not—"

"You can't spend the rest of your life hiding," Octavia said before she could even finish her sentence. "I'll be right there with you. You'll be fine."

"Okay," Clarke said, not because she believed her, but because she didn't really feel like arguing, and maybe it would be good to get out for a while. Have a drink, loosen up, relax a little. She would be surrounded by people, and even if they were mostly strangers, the sheer number of them (she assumed since it was at a frat house it would be pretty big) would keep him in check if he did decide to make an appearance. So she got dressed in tight jeans and a bright top that maybe wasn't weather appropriate, but that's what coats were for and they would be inside packed in with a bunch of other people anyway.

By the time they got there, the party was already in full swing. They were handed beers without question (which, if they got caught, would land them in big trouble, but as long as the party didn't get out of hand, it was unlikely they would get caught) and quickly absorbed into the crowd. Octavia knew a few of the people there – kids from her classes, Clarke assumed – and soon they were talking and laughing. 

"I'm gonna go dance!" Octavia almost-shouted into Clarke's ear, because they'd ended up near a speaker and it was the only way to be heard. "You want to come?"

"Nah," Clarke said. "I'm okay."

"Okay," Octavia said, and slipped into the mass of moving bodies. 

Clarke watched her for a minute, but then felt someone come up from behind her, and she immediately spun, fearing the worst. But it wasn't Finn. It was a boy that was in her lit class, who she'd talked to a few times when they'd been forced into small groups for discussions. Miller, she was pretty sure his name was, although she wasn't actually 100% on whether that was his first name or his last. Whatever it was, he was nice, and funny, and she was so relieved to see that it was anyone but Finn that she flashed him a huge grin. "Hey!"

"Hey," he said. "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"

She laughed. "Just having a good time," she said. "You?"

"Having a better one now that you're here," he said, and it was a little bit lame as far as flirting went, and she wasn't even sure that he was actually flirting or just playing at flirting with no intention of following through. She kind of hoped for the latter.

"Do you want to dance?" she asked him, because her beer was gone now and talking was too difficult. 

"Sure," he said, and followed her, dancing with her but not _with_ her, just nearby like two friends did, and he actually wasn't a bad dancer – better than her but that wasn't necessarily hard, although she was coordinated enough that she didn't actively embarrass herself – and when she saw Octavia she smiled and waved and mouthed the words, 'Thank you,' because this was definitely what she'd needed after all.

After a few songs, they left the dance floor (or section of the living room that had ended up becoming the dance floor) and went to find drinks, because the place was heating up and Clarke could feel the sweat running down her spine. They found a quieter area where it was actually possible to talk, and conversation was easy (if a little mundane – classes and homework and mutual acquaintances) and it was nice to just feel like a normal person with a normal life for a little while.

She should have known that it wouldn't last. As a song that was apparently Miller's 'jam' came up, they headed back to the living room, but they never made it. Clarke had been pulling him along by the hand so they didn't get separated, but all of a sudden it was torn from her grasp. She turned just in time to see a fist land against Miller's jaw, and his body hit the floor.

"STOP!" she screamed, as the thrower of the punch landed on top of him, and began pummeling him, tearing his arms away from his face so that he couldn't defend himself. She tried to grab one of Finn's arms – because of course it was Finn, who else would it be? – but he moved too fast, and by the time someone else (several someone elses) managed to get hold of him and pull him off, Miller's face was bleeding, already turning purple with bruises, and he was curled into a fetal position.

The party ended then, with almost everyone gone before the emergency vehicles arrived. Finn was taken away by the police, and Miller by the paramedics, and Clarke was left sitting on the porch, her hands shaking as she held a police woman's jacket closed around her shoulders and gave her statement. Octavia came out a little while later with her own jacket, and she put it on, handing back the one that had been so kindly lent.

"What happens now?" Clarke asked.

"We'll get a statement from the young man that was assaulted," she said, "as well as from the assailant. If the injured party wishes to press charges, then we'll take it from there."

"If he doesn't?"

"If he doesn't, then at that point it's up to the school how they want to handle it. It may or may not fall under their jurisdiction, depending on whether the fraternity owns the building or whether the university does."

"The boy – the one who attacked Miller – he's... he did it because of me. He did it because I was with Miller, because maybe it looked to him like there was something going on between us. There wasn't. He's just..."

"Don't worry about that," the policewoman – Byrne, her badge said – told her. "None of this is your fault."

"I know," Clarke said, because in her head she did know, but in her heart... "But the thing is, he's been – he thought there was something going on between us, and there's not, and he's been following me around. There's a record. I made a report."

"Do you have the report number?" Officer Byrne asked. 

"Yes," Clarke said. She'd saved it in her phone. She looked it up and gave it to her.

"Thank you," Byrne said. "I will definitely take a look into this."

"I reported it to campus security, too," Clarke said. 

"I'll make a note." And she did, and it was a relief that she actually seemed to be taking this seriously. She didn't think that Clarke was crazy, or that this was just boys being boys, fighting over a girl or whatever, and that it wasn't a big deal. 

"Thank you," Clarke said. "Is there... did you need anything else?"

"I've got your contact information," she said. "If we need anything else, we'll be in touch. Why don't you go on home now?"

"Yes ma'am," Clarke said. 

But she didn't want to go home. Home was just a dorm room, and yes, Octavia would be there, and she was sure that she would be sympathetic, but it wasn't where she wanted to be right now. She didn't know _where_ she wanted to be... except she did. She knew exactly where she wanted to be, and she also knew that it was more than she had any right to ask.

"Ready to go home?" Octavia asked.

"No," Clarke said.

"Me either," Octavia admitted. "I... I have an idea." She took a few steps away so that Clarke couldn't overhear, and a few minutes later she was back. "Come on," she said. "There is only one thing that can save this night, and I know just the place."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early post today, because I have to get on the road to go to my brother's wedding, and I didn't want to take a chance on forgetting/not having time to do it later. Enjoy!


	50. Lexa

Lexa was startled by the knock at her door. It had to be Anya, but it was past eleven, and because they were early risers, they also tended to go to bed early... even on a Friday night. Which probably made her the lamest college student ever, and Anya old before her time, but it worked for them. 

"Lexa? Are you awake?"

"I am now," Lexa said, getting up to open the door. The truth was she hadn't been asleep at all, and she was pretty sure Anya would be able to tell, but she'd been trying to be for at least an hour. She'd thought that maybe she'd finally gotten past the insomnia that had plagued her, but sleep had been elusive for the past week, and punctuated by nightmares when she finally did manage to get there. It wasn't really surprising, but it didn't make it pleasant.

"Get dressed," Anya said as she yanked a brush through her hair. "We're going out."

"It's almost midnight," Lexa said. "Where are we going?"

"Out for waffles, apparently."

"Apparently?" Lexa left her door cracked open as she went to change into clothes that were fit to be seen in public in, so that she wouldn't have to shout to be heard. If Anya decided to poke her head in and saw something she didn't want to, that was her own fault. 

"Lincoln just called and asked us to come."

"Lincoln?" Lexa quickly braided back her hair and went to her closet to pull out her favorite hoodie... remembering then that Clarke still had it. "Why would Lincoln ask us to come out in the middle of the night?" Sure, they trained together, and occasionally they would hang out after training, but they weren't exactly what Lexa would consider impromptu middle of the night hangout buddies. (She was pretty sure she didn't have any of those.) 

"He got a call from Octavia," Anya said. "She was at a party and something happened, and she's upset so she called Lincoln – and no, I don't know if they're officially 'a thing' or whatever kids are calling it these days, but—"

"Anya, you're not that old."

Lexa thought she heard her laugh. "She asked Lincoln to meet her, and to ask us if we would come, too. More specifically, she asked for you."

"Me?" That made even less sense than Lincoln calling them, and if Octavia had asked for _her_ , why had he called Anya instead? Except he probably didn't have her number, she realized. She wasn't exactly generous when it came to giving it out.

"She and Clarke were at a party," Anya said, appearing at her door. "Finn showed up."

Lexa didn't need to hear any more than that. "I'm almost ready."

"I thought you might be," Anya said, and there was something in her tone that Lexa wasn't sure she liked. Amusement, maybe, or exasperation, or... she decided now wasn't the time to pick a fight over it. If something had happened to Clarke, and she wasn't there to do whatever she could for her, she wouldn't forgive herself.

Lexa glanced at the picture on her nightstand, and of course Costia wasn't looking at her, there was no way that a picture where the subject of it was laughing could glare accusingly... but it kind of felt like it was. She shivered and switched off the light so she wouldn't see it anymore, and went to get her coat.

The drive to the all-night diner was a short one, and when they got there it was actually fairly busy. Lexa suspected they probably did a lot of business in the wee hours of the morning, since it was pretty much the only place for college students pulling all-nighters to go if they wanted food. Lincoln stood up from one of the round booths in the corner and waved to them.

Lexa was sure that she imagined that Clarke's eyes lit up when she saw them, but she definitely didn't imagine it when Clarke got up and moved so that Lexa could sit down beside her, even though there was plenty of room around the rest of the table. "I have to be on the end," she explained. "Left-handed."

"Right," Lexa said, then almost smiled at the unintentional pun. She took the opportunity to look Clarke up and down, and she _seemed_ to be all right, at least physically. She hung up her coat on the hook nearby and sat down, and Octavia scooted over to give her room. 

"Sorry to make you come out this late," Clarke said. "It wasn't my idea."

"I don't mind," Lexa said, and she didn't. She'd told Clarke that if she needed anything, she would be there, hadn't she? If she minded any part of this, it was that the request had come to her third hand. Fourth? Clarke to Octavia to Lincoln to Anya to her, except it hadn't been Clarke's idea. But Octavia had thought, or known, somehow, to ask for Lexa, and it wasn't for her own benefit. 

The waitress came over then, looking tired and bored. "Are you ready to order?"

"Can we have a few more minutes?" Lincoln asked. "Some of our party just arrived."

Lexa was pretty sure that she imagined that Clarke cringed at the word party. Her fingers twitched as she resisted the urge to reach out to her, to put her hand over Clarke's and squeeze, to reassure her that it was all right, that she was safe.

Instead she leaned in and asked softly, "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Clarke said. 

"Okay." Lexa let it go, because it didn't do either of them any good to force the issue. Instead they looked over the menu, even though Clarke claimed she wasn't hungry, and Lexa's stomach was in knots that had been there from the moment Anya knocked on her door, and had tightened when she'd heard the name Clarke, and snarled further still at the name Finn. Now they'd hit the point where, had it been yarn, the only way to get it out would be with scissors.

When the waitress came back they ordered, waffles and pancakes and other breakfast foods. "Comfort food," Octavia declared. "French fries and burgers are for when you're drunk."

"Is that the rule?" Lincoln asked. He had his arm around the back of the bench behind her, not quite touching her, and Lexa wasn't sure exactly what that meant, but it was none of her business anyway. 

"It's not so much a rule as a guideline," Octavia replied.

"I _know_ what parley means," Lincoln said.

"Not _you_ Jack. We named the monkey Jack," Octavia returned, and they both grinned. 

"Pirates of the Caribbean," Clarke whispered, so Lexa's expression must have been as confused as she felt. Usually she was better at hiding that sort of thing. "You've never seen it?"

"Should I have?" Lexa asked.

"Yes!" Clarke said. "The sequels are kind of eh, but the first one is good." 

"I'll have to see if it's on Netflix or something," Lexa said. 

"I have it on DVD," Octavia said. "You can borrow it. Or we could all get together and watch it."

_Let's see if we can even survive having a meal together first,_ Lexa thought, even though there was no reason to believe that they couldn't. They all got along fine. She was just out of sorts, because she had made a promise that she was now afraid she wouldn't be able to keep... Actually, she'd made two promises, and keeping one meant breaking the other, or might. To keep both meant breaking her own heart, but so did choosing, so really, no matter what she did it was the wrong choice.

"Thanks," Lexa said, because it was expected. 

"Are _you_ okay?" Clarke asked, shifting close enough to her that their knees bumped. "You look..." She didn't finish the sentence, just shrugged. 

"I'm fine," Lexa said, because that's what Clarke needed to hear. 

"You don't look fine. You look like you haven't slept all week."

"It's been a rough couple of days," Lexa admitted. "But really, I'm fine."

"My dad hated that word," Clarke said. "He said that it meant nothing. That it was a word people used to avoid saying how they were really feeling. That it was a socially acceptable answer to a question that everyone asked and no one really cared about the answer to. Except he always cared."

"My father never asked," Lexa said. "He would ask what I had learned that day in school, and if I had homework, and that kind of thing, but he never actually asked me how I was. I don't think he wanted to know the answer."

"What would the answer have been?" Clarke asked. "If he'd asked."

Lexa smiled wryly. "Probably 'fine'," she said. "I didn't have a choice but to be anything else."

Clarke leaned closer so that her shoulder pressed into Lexa's, and it was almost certainly meant as a gesture of comfort and not an accident, but Lexa didn't want to read too much into it. Clarke was just having a rough night, and it didn't _mean_ anything. And it shouldn't. Clarke was a friend, and that was all that she could ever be. 

The food came, and they were quiet for a while as everyone chewed, and then started stealing bites from everyone else's plates, because of course everyone else's food always ends up looking better than your own. 

They stayed long past when their waitress would have liked them to leave, and even when they moved out to the parking lot, Octavia and Clarke still seemed jittery about the idea of going back to their dorm room. 

"We could always watch that movie now," Anya said. 

"Are you sure?" Clarke asked. "It's late."

"None of us is going to sleep tonight anyway." 

"I'll take Octavia back to the dorm to get it, and meet you at your place," Lincoln said. 

"Sounds like a plan," Anya said. "See you in a few."


	51. Clarke

Lexa offered her shotgun, but Clarke chose to ride in the back. It wasn't far back to the condo anyway. When they got there, Anya got busy making popcorn (even though they'd all just eaten) and Lexa found a few spare blankets for people to curl up under if they wanted to. They didn't talk much, and Clarke couldn't decide if it was a comfortable silence or not. She wished she had something to do, some task to occupy her, but one wasn't offered and she didn't ask, because she knew she would be told to just relax. 

She was glad when Octavia and Lincoln arrived, and they all settled in to watch. Anya took the recliner, and Lincoln and Octavia took the beat up old love seat that was only big enough to sit approximately one and a half people... which given how big he was and how small she was, was pretty much right. Neither of them seemed to mind that it meant Octavia was basically half in his lap.

That left Clarke and Lexa on the couch, and there was plenty of room for them to spread out, but when Lexa took a corner, Clarke sat in the middle. She told herself it was to make it easier for them to share a bowl of popcorn, but the truth was that she just wanted to be near her, to have the presence of another person nearby – near enough to touch, near enough to feel the warmth of her skin even through her clothing – and she was pretty sure Lexa knew it. If she minded, she gave no sign.

It had been a while since Clarke had seen Pirates, but it was as good as she remembered – fun and funny and a little bit scary at times, and if she maybe played up how scared she was to have an excuse to lean in to Lexa, so what? For Lexa's part, she actually smiled a little, and laughed (more an exhalation than an actual sound, but it still seemed like progress). When the popcorn was gone she set aside the bowl and slid her hands under the blanket. A minute later Clarke did the same, and somewhere along the line (and she was sure they would both pretend they weren't actually doing it on purpose) their hands brushed against each other, and then their fingers linked, and stayed that way for the rest of the movie.

By then it was closing in on three in the morning, and they were all exhausted. "I'll give you a ride home, if you want," Lincoln offered, dislodging Octavia from his lap so he could stand up, although she seemed disinclined to acquiesce to the idea of separating from him. 

Lexa's fingers tightened around hers, and when Clarke looked at her, there was something in her eyes... a question, almost a plea. _Stay._

"Actually, I was thinking maybe I could just crash here?" Clarke asked. "If that's all right?"

"That's fine," Anya said, and Lexa nodded. 

"Okay," Octavia said, and she pulled away from Lincoln long enough to lean in and hug Clarke. "Call me if you need anything," she whispered, and then she smirked. "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"I'm pretty sure I know _exactly_ what you're planning to do," Clarke whispered back, hugging her one-armed because Lexa still had the other hand, and Octavia had the good grace to blush, even as she grinned. "I'll see you tomorrow. Or I guess today, at this point."

"See you later," Octavia agreed, and left with Lincoln, and Clarke was absolutely sure that she wouldn't be going back to their dorm room either. (Unless maybe Lincoln had a roommate they didn't want to disturb, in which case they might since their room would be empty...)

"We'll clean up in the morning," Anya said, and headed for her room, leaving the two of them alone. 

"Thank you," Clarke said, loud enough that she could hear before she closed the door. "I really appreciate this," she added, just to Lexa now. "I know you said if I needed anything, to tell you, but you've really gone above and beyond."

Lexa looked away, as if she was embarrassed by the gratitude. "You are always welcome here, Clarke," she said, but even as she said it she pulled her hand away, and if it wasn't actually meant as a rejection, it sure has hell felt like one. "I'll go get sheets and blankets."

They made the couch into a bed for her, and Lexa lent her pajamas again – the same ones she'd worn last time, actually, and Clarke didn't know if that was intentional or not. The spare toothbrush was still in the cup on the bathroom counter, and there was something oddly intimate about it, seeing it there next to Lexa's. 

"Thank you," she said again, as she settled in under the blankets. 

"You don't have to keep thanking me," Lexa said. "This is what friends do."

Clarke bit her lip to keep from saying the first thing that popped into her head, which was, 'How would you know?' Because by every indication Lexa had given, she didn't actually have a lot of experience with friends and the sort of things that they did. Maybe she was just taking her cues from what Anya had done for her, in which case it seemed like she'd learned from the best. Clarke knew that she still didn't have the whole story there, and maybe she never would, but whatever it was, it had led to Lexa standing there awkwardly, like she wasn't sure what else to say but she wasn't quite ready to just walk away, either.

"Then you're a good friend," Clarke said finally. 

Lexa nodded, or maybe she just lowered her eyes and brought them back up again, and Clarke mistook it for a nod. "I can stay out here a little longer, if you want to me to," she said softly, and it made Clarke wonder whose benefit Lexa was asking for, Clarke's or her own. It made her want to reach out, pull her close (had they ever really hugged?) and not let go for a little while (or maybe a long while) because as much as she was messed up from Finn and everything that had happened – not just tonight but all of the days and nights since Christmas that had led up to it – she could also see all of the cracks in Lexa's mask, the fractures that appeared in her attempt at a blank stare, and she was hurting too, and...

And neither of them was really in the right place to give or receive the sort of comfort that the other needed, Clarke concluded, not sure she actually believed it but just because she was afraid of how badly she wanted to try.

"I'll be okay," she said. "Go sleep. I'll see you in the morning."

Lexa nodded, and retreated to her room without another word... stopping only to switch on the little light over the stove to act as a nightlight for Clarke. 

"Good night, Lexa," she said, before she could shut her door.

"Good night, Clarke." 

Clarke held her breath, listening, but the click of the latch never came. Lexa had left her door cracked open, and there was a part of her that wanted to believe that meant something, but she was pretty sure she was overthinking all of this.

She curled up on the couch, drawing the blankets up. The one on top was the one that she and Lexa had been sharing, and it held the scent of the other girl – her shampoo, probably, or soap, something citrusy and a little sweet – and she took more comfort in that than she probably should. She didn't care, though, because it meant that when she closed her eyes, her thoughts weren't immediately dragged back to everything that had gone wrong tonight. Instead, she thought about what had gone right, and let it give her the peace she needed to actually sleep.

She woke up to the smell of coffee and the clattering of pans. "Sorry," Anya said. "I was trying to be quiet."

"It's okay," Clarke said, sitting up and yawning. "What time is it?"

"A little after eight," Anya said. "Yes, it's way too early. No, none of us got enough sleep. But I'm up and I'm hungry."

Clarke smiled. "Anything I can do to help?"

"Tell me how you like your eggs," Anya said.

"Cooked," Clarke said. "Other than that, I'm not picky."

Anya smiled. "Right. If you want to grab some bread and put it in the toaster, that would be great."

Clarke did, and when the food was almost ready, she went to Lexa's room and knocked. Her knuckles against the door pushed it open farther, confirming her suspicion from the night before that it hadn't been fully closed in the first place. "Breakfast is almost ready," she said. 

"I'm not hungry," Lexa said. "But thank you."

"Anya already made your eggs," Clarke said. "They'd be gross cold."

"She should have asked first," Lexa said, and there was an edge to her voice that Clarke decided was better not to push against, for fear of being cut. 

"Okay," Clarke said. "I'll tell her."

She left the room, not knowing what else to do, and wondering if this had all been a mistake, or if she'd dreamed parts of it. After what had happened with Costia's mother (yes, they had hugged, when she'd been trying to help Lexa hold the pieces of her shattered heart – and life – together), Lexa hadn't said much to her, and then all of a sudden she'd gotten a call in the middle of the night to come out and eat because Clarke was having a bad night, which had turned into several hours of hanging out and Clarke staying over, and she'd promised she would be there but maybe she was regretting that promise. 

"Tell me what?" Anya asked.

"She says she's not hungry," Clarke said. "I told her that you'd already made her eggs, and she said that you should have asked first."

"Wonderful," Anya said, rolling her eyes. "Go ahead and eat. I'll deal with her."


	52. Lexa

Lexa heard her door open again, and then close with a click that sounded very final. She knew without having to look that it wasn't Clarke coming back, and that she was about to catch hell for being... herself, she guessed. Her uncooperative, moody self. 

"Get up or I'll get you up," Anya hissed, and Lexa knew she meant it. Last summer, when she'd been coping badly with Costia's death (which was an understatement and she knew it) Anya had finally gotten fed up and had picked her up out of bed bodily and dumped her in the shower, turning the water on cold to snap her out of it. It had worked, at least enough to convince her to wash and get dressed and change her sheets. 

She'd needed that then. If she'd been left to her own devices, she doubted very much that she would have gotten up at all, and her father would have taken a lot longer to make her. He wasn't exactly the best example when it came to grieving. Not that she actually knew how he dealt with her mother's death; after it happened he sent her away to stay with his parents, who had no idea what to do with a little girl who had just lost the one source of stability she had, and who was not sad, but angry about it. He'd taken her back the better part of a year later, and by then he had apparently gotten over it, and they just never talked about her mother again.

The covers were tugged away, and then Anya gripped her by the shoulder and pushed her onto her back, pinning her down. Lexa blinked up at her, startled. "What?" she snarled, because that's what a cornered animal did – they bared their teeth. "There's an expiration date on grief now?"

"No," Anya said, "but there's an expiration date on my patience. I know that you're going through a hard time. I know that seeing Costia's mother stirred things up just when you were starting to wrap your head around all of this. But that doesn't mean you get to just give up all over again."

"What do you know about it?" Lexa snapped. "Who have you ever lost?"

Anya absorbed the verbal blow, her face not changing. "You don't know everything about me," she replied. "You actually know very little, because you've never bothered to ask."

Lexa felt it as the slap it was almost certainly meant to be, a reminder that she had been – was still being – selfish. She took from Anya, took and took and took, and what did she give back? 

"But it doesn't matter," Anya said. "I knew what I was getting into when I brought you here. Maybe I overestimated my ability to help you. Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. What do I know about anything, right? But here's something that you keep forgetting, or maybe never even considered in the first place – you're allowed to move on. You have... deified Costia in your memory. You have sanctified your relationship with her, put it and her on a pedestal like it was perfect, like it was the ideal, and there is no chance that you will ever find anything like that again. You've forgotten that it wasn't perfect. The night she was killed, you had a fight. That's what you told me. That's what you told the police. You had a fight. It wasn't your first, and it very likely wouldn't have been your last. You loved each other, and maybe you would have figured things out, figured out ways to bridge those gaps between who you are and who she was, and maybe you would have lived happily ever after."

Anya paused, forced Lexa to look at her. "And maybe you wouldn't have. Maybe those gaps would have kept widening, and maybe you would have decided – amicably or otherwise – that you were better off apart than together. It happens. You lick your wounds, you learn from it, and you move on. But you... you're stuck. You had no closure, so you're stuck, and I will do everything I can to help you, but in the end it's your decision whether you're going to let this kill you or make you stronger. You have to be the one to give yourself permission to move on."

"I tried to move on!" Lexa said, too loud even in her own ears.

If Anya registered it as the attack Lexa intended, she didn't let it show. "That wasn't trying to move on," she said, infuriatingly calm. "You did it because you knew I would reject you. That was the opposite of trying to connect; that was you trying to push me away."

Lexa's jaw clenched, but she couldn't really argue that Anya was wrong. She was, partially, but mostly not. When she had kissed Anya so many months ago she'd done so knowing that there was no interest on the other side, knowing that it wouldn't go anywhere. Maybe she'd felt like she deserved the rejection... at this point it was all blurry and tangled up in the interwoven threads of numbness and agony of those first few months after. But there had been a part of her that _had_ been trying to connect, even as she'd been trying to punish herself for wanting to, because maybe if something could break through the surface, maybe if she felt something on the outside...

Anya had never deserved any of it. She probably owed her an apology – probably owed her a hundred apologies – but she knew that if she tried Anya would just wave them off. 

"Get up, Lexa," she said. "Grief doesn't have an end date. There is no point in time where you can just say, 'Okay, I'm done now.' But you have to at least _try_. Which means getting up, eating, doing all of the things that a person does." And then she played her trump card, and somehow Lexa had almost forgotten. "Especially when there is someone out there who is here because they're going through their own more immediate shit, and for whatever reason they take comfort in your presence. So get up or I'll get you up, and I don't think you want Clarke to see that."

She didn't. She didn't need Clarke to see her being manhandled, treated like a petulant child... even if that was how she was acting. Yes, Costia was part of it. Grief was part of it. But part of it was just being self-indulgent. And Clarke needed her, or she wouldn't be here. 

But now Clarke was all tangled up in this too. She was part of the problem – maybe most of the problem now – and she didn't want to see her. She didn't want to look at her and see... pity? understanding? She didn't know. 

She did know that Clarke didn't deserve to be sitting out there alone, wondering what was going on and whether her presence had caused it.

"I'm getting up."

"Good." Anya let up the pressure on her shoulder. "Your eggs are probably already cold."

"I'll live."

She meant the words to be flippant, snarky... but Anya took them to be more than that, because of course she did. "Good," she said. "I'm glad to hear you say that. After breakfast, we'll get ready for class."

"We barely slept," Lexa groaned.

"What doesn't kill us makes us stronger," Anya replied, and got up. "Your g— your friend is waiting."

Lexa heard the slip and wondered if it was intentional. But Anya didn't really think... did she?

Now wasn't the time. She got up and followed Anya, sitting down next to Clarke at the breakfast bar. "Sorry I snapped at you," she said quietly. "I'm not always at my best in the morning."

"Neither am I," Clarke said. 

"Can we start over?"

"Sure."

Lexa looked at her, shaped her lips into a smile, let herself actually feel it until it warmed her eyes. "Good morning, Clarke," she said.

"Good morning, Lexa," Clarke replied, smiling back. 

And it felt good, comfortable, to sit there side by side eating breakfast, and Lexa let the feeling be, trying not to poke and prod it too hard. She knew, deep down, that she would pay for it later, because she always did, but for now... couldn't she just enjoy it for now?

"You could come to class with us," Lexa said. 

Clarke looked at her like she'd lost her mind. "I don't know about you, but I got less than five hours of sleep. There is no way I'm going to do anything that is even remotely like exercise today."

Lexa shrugged, a little bit disappointed but hiding it behind a mask of indifferent amusement, or at least that's what she tried for. "Okay," she said. "Maybe another time."

"I wonder if Octavia and Lincoln will be there," Anya mused. "Or if they got even less sleep than the rest of us."

"I don't even want to think about it," Clarke said. "But I'm sure I'll find out _all_ the gory details."

"She tells you that?" Lexa asked, not sure whether she should be amused or aghast. 

"Sometimes," Clarke said. "I can generally tell how much she likes a guy by how much she tells me." At Lexa's questioning look, she added, "There's an inverse relationship. The more she likes him, the less I know. So I think maybe this time it'll be light on the details."

"I know he likes her," Anya said. "I got a peek in his Moleskine and it's just page after page of sketches of her."

"He's an artist?" Clarke asked.

Anya nodded. "A pretty good one. Why?"

"Just... not what you'd expect."

"No," Anya agreed, "but he often isn't. Do you want us to drop you off before we go to the dojang?"

"That'd be great," Clarke said. "Thanks."

"Thanks," she repeated a little while later as she got out of the car. "For everything."

"Any time," Lexa said, and meant it, even though what that meant in terms of her own stupid betraying heart she wasn't sure. "I'll see you soon."

"Not if I see you first," Clarke replied, which was a ridiculous thing to say, and Lexa was pretty sure that the blush in her cheeks wasn't just from the cold. They stayed until she was safely inside the building, and then Anya just sat there, looking at her, for a long moment.

"What?" Lexa asked. 

"Nothing," Anya said. "Let's go. We're going to be late."

They weren't, but Lexa wasn't about to push the issue. She was pretty sure that whatever Anya was thinking, she didn't want – or wasn't ready – to know.


	53. Clarke

Clarke climbed up to her dorm room (she hated the elevator, which smelled alternately like puke and disinfectant, especially on weekend mornings) and unlocked the door. It felt like the room should have changed somehow, that _everything_ should have changed somehow, but it hadn't. Everything was exactly where they'd left it the night before, with clothing strewn around and makeup still out on Octavia's dresser. Could it really be less than 24 hours ago that they'd left for the party? It felt like a lifetime.

She cleaned up. Her stuff, Octavia's stuff, it didn't matter. It all got put back in its place, and when she didn't know something's proper place she found one for it, or put it neatly on Octavia's dresser or desk (whichever seemed more appropriate) for her to deal with. Clothes were hung, shoes tucked away. She even made their beds, down to changing their sheets, which maybe was a little weird but Octavia would live. She schlepped the dirty stuff down to the laundry room, and when she came back up she showered and changed and looked around and it still felt like things ought to be more different, but at least now everything was tidy.

Octavia still wasn't home, but that didn't really mean anything. Maybe she had gone to Tae Kwon Do that morning, or maybe she was still with Lincoln. Clarke thought about texting her, but decided against it. She would give her until noon to either show up or reach out before bugging her. Which left her with an hour to kill, and at least half of that before she could even go down to tend to the laundry. 

She scrolled through the contacts on her phone, pausing when she got to Finn's name. Deleting him wouldn't delete his text message history, would it? Because that might be needed as evidence or something. 

It reminded her of Lexa, and the cruel text messages she'd held on to for so long, the ones that she'd used to attack herself after her ex-girlfriend's mother attacked her. How she'd deleted them, wiped them out so that Lexa could never do it again, because it wasn't healthy, and anyway she didn't deserve that. She blamed herself for her girlfriend's death, but why? It hadn't been her fault. It wasn't like they'd been in an accident with Lexa driving, or like she'd pushed her into traffic or fed her poison or...

Clarke shook her head. Better not to think about Lexa. Now that the Finn situation was over, or at least winding down, they had no reason to be... whatever they were. She'd thought that maybe they were becoming friends, but she had no idea if Lexa felt the same. They'd held hands last night, but that was just because Clarke had been shaken up, it didn't _mean_ anything (right?), and then this morning Lexa hadn't seemed to want to see her, but then she'd apologized so maybe it didn't actually have anything to do with her, and maybe it was her own fault for telling her she could go to bed, that she would be okay when Lexa had offered to stay, and when they'd dropped Clarke off she'd said she would see Clarke later... It would be simpler if she could just ask, but how could that possibly _not_ be awkward? It was like the notes you passed in third grade. 'Do you like me?' with checkboxes for 'yes' and 'no'. And although Lexa claimed that she never said things that she didn't mean, Clarke got the feeling that she was pretty capable of spinning the truth when she needed to.

Better to just expect to have to let her go. 

And wouldn't that be better, anyway? Erase everything, every trace of the whole mess, from her life and move on. 

If that was really even possible. Anya was still her TA, and Octavia was still... whatever she was with Lincoln, and both of them were connected to Lexa. It wasn't as easy as just erasing her name from her phone. 

But that didn't mean that she couldn't erase Finn. Except there was still the possibility that the texts might be needed, so in the end she took screenshots of them just in case, then deleted him so at least she wouldn't be reminded every time she scrolled past his name. 

She kept scrolling, and landed on Mom. She started to go past, then went back to her, and before she could think about it, she tapped on her name and hit the green button to call, putting the phone to her ear and listening to it ring, part of her hoping for voicemail so she didn't actually have to deal with her mother... but most of her hoping that she would pick up. 

"Hello?" Her mother's voice, sounding breathless. "Clarke?"

"Hi Mom," she said, unexpected relief washing through her. "How are you?"

"I couldn't find my phone," she said. "Marcus—" She stopped herself. "I'm glad I didn't miss you."

"I'm glad you didn't miss me either," Clarke said, and felt her eyes stinging. She blinked hard to try and clear them. "I miss you." And it was true. She did miss her mother, almost as much as she missed her father, and all she wanted right now was to be near her, to get away from all off this and to just be _home_.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" her mother asked. "What's going on?"

"Can I... come home?" Clarke asked. "For the weekend?" She didn't care that Marcus might – probably would – be there. She didn't care that her mother had moved on and was starting a whole new family with someone else. If she wasn't part of that, was that really her mother's fault, or her own? She was the one who'd run away, and refused to talk to her mother, and generally been a jerk about the whole thing. Maybe her reasons had felt good and righteous at the time, but right now... right now she just wanted to not have to be an adult for a little while. 

"Of course you can," her mother said. "Do you want me to come get you?"

"No," Clarke said, sniffling. "No, I can drive." 

"Okay." Her mother was quiet for a moment, but she was there, she was definitely still there. "I'm worried about you."

"I'm okay," Clarke said. "I promise. I just would really like to come home."

"I'll be waiting for you when you get here," her mother said. "I promise."

"Okay. See you soon." She hung up, and brushed away her tears, and then texted Octavia to tell her that she was going home for the weekend, but she would be back the next night. 

**Octavia:** Everything ok?

**Clarke:** Yeah. Just... last night was a lot.

**Octavia:** I know. Drive safe, okay?

**Clarke:** I will.

It wasn't until she was halfway home, pulled off at a rest area to pee and grab a snack, that she remembered the laundry she'd left in the washer. She texted Octavia again.

**Clarke:** I washed our sheets. They're in the washer. I forgot.

**Octavia:** I'll take care of it. xoxo

**Clarke:** Thanks. You're the best.

**Octavia:** I know. ;-)

The drive home seemed to take forever, but she finally pulled into the driveway, and sure enough there were two cars in it, and for a second she wondered if she'd made a mistake. Then her mother opened the door and stepped out, coming to greet her and pulling her into a tight hug as soon as she'd extracted herself from the driver's seat. 

"I'll get Marcus to get your bag," she said. "Just come inside."

Clarke obeyed, because it was easier than arguing, and after taking off her coat her mother hugged her again, and this time she hugged back, clinging, really, and letting the tears she'd been holding in since the night before really fall. "I'm sorry," she said, over and over again, even as her mother hushed her, stroking her hair and reassuring her that it was all right, she was safe now, she could cry if she needed to.

When she had finally calmed down a little, she sighed and wiped her eyes and blew her nose and let her head fall back against her mother's shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said again. "It's just been a long weekend."

"What happened?" her mother asked. 

"Octavia and I went to a party last night. With everything that's been going on, I'd kind of become a hermit and she was sick of it and thought it would do me good to get out. And it did... for a little while. But then Finn showed up and..." She frowned. "I should check on Miller. I should have before I left." What kind of a friend was she? She was so wrapped up in her own shit that she didn't even check on the guy who'd had his face pounded in... because of her.

"Who's Miller?" her mother asked. 

"The guy that Finn beat up because he was dancing with me," Clarke said. "It wasn't even like that. We're just friends. Not even really friends. Just acquaintances, but we were having fun. I guess Finn decided that it was more than that, and he attacked him, and... They took Miller away to the hospital, and Finn got taken by the police."

"He got arrested?" Abby asked.

"Yeah. I don't know if Miller is going to press charges, though, so he may just get to walk." The thought of it made her shiver. If he just got let go, that meant he could start following her again, showing up wherever she was... but now she knew what he was capable of, and who was to say that the next time he got it into his head to go after someone who was thwarting his ability to have her, it wouldn't actually be her?

Or Octavia, or Anya, or Lexa... or anyone else that she was close to.

"I told the police that he'd been following me," she said. 

"I know," her mother said. "I was there."

"No, I mean... last night. When they took my statement about what had happened, I told them that I'd previously reported it, and gave them the case number and everything. She... the officer... she seemed to take it seriously."

"That's good." Her mother stroked back her hair. "You're doing everything right," she reassured her. 

"Except I should have checked on Miller."

"Do you have his number?" Abby asked.

"I don't think so, no."

"Do you know where he was taken?"

"No."

Abby frowned. "I guess it will have to wait," she said. "I'm sure he'll understand."

"He probably doesn't want to talk to me anyway," Clarke said. "Not after what happened to him because of me."

"It's not your fault," Abby told her. "Clarke, you have to remember that. None of this is your fault."

"If I hadn't—"

"No." She took Clarke's face between her hands. "No. Just because you showed interest in someone once doesn't give them permission to pursue it if you have told them that you are not interested after the fact. It certainly doesn't give them permission to stalk you, or to attack anyone else because of their proximity to you. Do you understand?"

Clarke nodded.

"Good." She leaned in, kissed Clarke's forehead. "I'm glad you're here."

"Me too," Clarke said. "I love you."

"I love you too, sweetheart. More than anything. More than ever."

Clarke wasn't entirely sure what to make of that, or if she should be making anything of it at all. In the end, she decided she was just too tired to overthink it, and curled up with her head in her mother's lap, feeling her fingers comb through her hair, and slept.


	54. Lexa

Lexa woke up groggy but pushed herself out of bed anyway. She should have gone to sleep earlier the night before, especially after so little sleep on Friday, but every time she'd started to drift off she'd jerked awake again, feeling as if she was forgetting something or that something was wrong, off, some part of her nighttime ritual had been overlooked and she couldn't sleep until she figured out what it was.

It finally struck her, sometime after midnight, that it was the fact that Clarke hadn't texted her to say good night.

It was a good thing, she told herself. It let her know where she stood. Now that the thing with Finn was resolved, this... whatever it was... was over. And that was fine. That was as it should be. She'd never meant for it to be anything other than one person helping out another person when she needed it. She'd never meant to start thinking of Clarke as a friend and this was proof that she wasn't. 

_Or maybe it's just proof that she's human,_ another, probably more reasonable, part of her said. _Maybe it's just proof that you were both up way too late last night and she fell asleep early and maybe if she woke up again she thought it was too late and she would wake you, so she decided to let it go for one night. Maybe she's just being polite._

But she didn't want to listen to that part, because that part suggested other possibilities. Impossible ones. Ones that left her open to a world of hurt that she wasn't ever going to revisit. Been there, done that. What didn't kill you made you stronger, and she had been weak once, and she wasn't going to make that mistake again. 

So why was she staring at the screen of her phone, at the text messages they'd exchanged in the past that she never erased? Why were her thumbs hovering over the keys, ready to tap out a message that she knew she would be better off not sending? 

Why couldn't she just let this go?

_Because there's only one way to know for sure where things stand,_ she told herself. _There's only one way to settle things once and for all._

**Lexa:** Good morning, Clarke.

She hesitated, then hit Send.

After that she forced herself up and dressed and out the door, leaving her phone behind. If Clarke hadn't responded by the time she got back, then she could write it all off as a job at least halfway-decently done, but over, and move on. 

Because she was so good at that.

It was cold, although the worst of the winter was probably over, and the air didn't feel like it was grating the insides of her lungs with fragments of ice. Still, when she got home she almost immediately hopped in the shower. When she got out, her phone was ringing. She glanced at the screen. Clarke. Her stomach dropped.

"Hello?"

"Good morning, Lexa," she said. "You didn't answer my texts, so I thought I would call."

"I was out running."

"Right. You don't take your phone with you?"

"No."

"Don't you need to listen to music while you run or something? I mean, it seems like it would be hopelessly boring without _something_."

Lexa shrugged, then realized that Clarke couldn't hear that. She sank down on her bed, making sure her robe was wrapped close around her even though there was no one around to see. She was tempted to crawl back into bed, to let the blankets wrap around her and keep her warm the way Clarke's voice did.

She dismissed the thought as soon as she had it. It was exactly the kind of thing that she _shouldn't_ be thinking. 

"Sometimes I listen to audiobooks," she said.

A sound that might have been a snort, or a laugh. It was hard to tell. "You would."

"What do you mean by that?" Lexa asked, trying to be offended and failing. 

"You just... I don't know. I guess I don't know you well enough to say something like that. But sometimes you kind of come off as a snob."

Lexa's eyebrows went up. "A snob?" she asked. "Not a bitch?"

"I try not to use that word," Clarke said. "I don't like gendered insults."

_Neither did Costia,_ Lexa thought, but she swallowed the words before they could make their way to her lips. "Why do I come off as a snob?"

"Honestly? You never smile. You rarely talk. And you have really good posture. So it all kind of comes together to make it seem as if you think you're better than everyone else."

"I'll have to tell my father that my posture is being held against me," she said. "He was the one who was always telling me to sit up straight."

"It's not a bad thing," Clarke said. "I didn't mean it like that."

"I know," Lexa said, softening her tone. "It's not the first time I've been called a snob, or worse."

"I don't think you are, anyway," Clarke said. "I think you're just... protecting yourself."

The words caught Lexa off guard, not because they weren't true, but because they _were_ , and very few people seemed to understand that. Very few people ever really took the time to try. Not that it was their fault; she'd become very adept very early at keeping people at arm's length. 

"Like you have Tae Kwon Do to protect yourself from being hurt physically, you... put up walls to keep yourself from being hurt emotionally. Which makes sense, given everything you've been through."

_You don't know anything about me,_ Lexa wanted to say, but it wasn't true and she didn't say things she didn't mean. Clarke _did_ know something about her, something huge, and beyond that, a lot of little things that she'd given away in conversations they'd had. 

"Where are you?" Lexa asked, not really knowing where the question came from, why she suddenly felt like she needed to know.

"At my mom's house," Clarke said. "I came home for the weekend. I just... needed to be home. Even though it's..." She stopped, sighed. "I miss my dad. A lot."

"I miss my mom, too," Lexa said. She pushed herself back on her bed, leaning against the headboard and tucking her feet under the blankets. "You would think that when you'd lived more than half of your life without someone, you would stop missing them, but... you don't. Or I don't."

"How old were you when she died?"

"Eight," Lexa said. "Almost nine."

"Wow. I... I can't imagine."

"Yeah. My dad sent me to live with my grandparents – his parents – after, for about nine months, and then he took me back and it was just me and him, moving from base to base."

"What happened if he got... deployed? Is that the word?"

"That's the word, but he didn't. With his job, he didn't get sent out into the field like that. He was always on a base, so I could go with him."

"What was your favorite place you ever lived?"

"Hawaii," Lexa said. "That was where we lived when my mom died, and you would think that would make me hate it, but what I hated was being taken away from it. I wasn't born there, but pretty much all of my early memories are there. We were actually there longer than usual. So it felt like home. Then she died and I got taken away and..." She shrugged again. "I started building those walls, I guess."

"Do you want to go back there?" Clarke asked. 

"Yes." It was the main place that she'd thought about going on the plane home from Australia, when she'd been considering whether to just take off and disappear. But it would have been too predictable, maybe. "I was going to go back for college, but... it didn't work out."

By which she meant that Costia had convinced her that it would have been too difficult to maintain a relationship over that kind of distance, over that many time zones, and she didn't want to be that far away from her family. They'd gone back and forth about it for months, sometimes talking rationally and sometimes arguing heatedly, and in the end Lexa had conceded. Because love had been largely absent from her life for so long, and she'd finally opened herself up to it, and to throw it away... wouldn't that have been worse than anything? They had their whole lives to travel. They would make it to Hawaii one day. 

So they'd ended up here. Together.

But now Costia was gone, and Lexa was still here. Alone.

Only she wasn't alone, was she? She had Anya, who was moving around in the kitchen, and Clarke, who she could hear breathing on the other end of the line, not asking questions, maybe just waiting to see what else Lexa would say. 

She didn't know what to say. "What about you? What's your favorite place?"

"I don't know," Clarke said. "We took vacations and stuff when I was growing up, but there's not really a place that I can think of that I fell in love with. Except Disney World, when I was little, but that's every kid."

"Not every kid," Lexa said.

"Oh, don't tell me you hate Disney," Clarke said. "No one can hate Disney. It's not possible."

"I've never been."

A beat of silence, and then a squawk of indignation that made Lexa pull the phone from her ear. "No! Unacceptable. You poor deprived child. I'm taking you to Disney. I would say spring break, but it will be crazy then, probably, and we don't have enough time to plan," Clarke said, as if she was genuinely considering it.

_Don't say that,_ Lexa thought. _Don't make promises you can't, or won't, keep. Don't even joke about it. Because I might just believe you. I might just be idiot enough to believe you._

"Clarke," Lexa said, just to stop her. "I should go."

"Oh," Clarke said. "I'll talk to you later, I guess?"

"I guess," Lexa echoed. "Goodbye, Clarke." She hung up without waiting to hear her say goodbye back, because she needed to have the final word. She needed to feel as if things had ended, and it had to be on her terms.

It wasn't rational. None of this was rational, and she knew it. But it had to be done, or else...

"I promised forever," she said, the words aimed at the picture on her nightstand. "I don't say things I don't mean."


	55. Clarke

_Idiot,_ Clarke chastised herself. Clearly she'd freaked Lexa out with her proclaiming that she was going to take her to Disney World... even if she'd kind of meant it. Not for spring break – that was only a week away, and if nothing else the cost of airfare would be insane, and although she'd never been there during a college spring break, she had vague recollections of how crowded it had been when they'd gone during her school vacation when she was a kid, and she knew that Lexa wasn't big on crowds – but at some point. Maybe.

_Except that's something that you do with friends,_ Clarke reminded herself. _And she was just helping you through a rough time. Now that that's over (please let it be over) she is probably ready to be done with you. You bring too much drama into her life, and she has plenty of that of her own._

She wanted to call Lexa back, to tell her that she was just joking, to reassure her that she wasn't that crazy and that she wasn't going to go creepy stalker on her – she already knew how that felt and had absolutely no desire to do that to anyone else – but wouldn't calling her right back do exactly the opposite?

She was actually glad when she heard the soft knock on her door. "Come in," she said, assuming it was her mother. Marcus had probably spent the night (he was still in the process of selling his old place, but he lived with her mother basically full time) but she couldn't imagine that he would have the audacity to actually knock on her door.

Her mother peeked in. "I'm surprised you're up this early," she said. 

Clarke shrugged. "It happens sometimes." _When you have a human alarm clock that tends to wake up at inhuman hours..._

"Were you talking to someone?"

She shrugged again. "Yeah. Just... checking in."

"With Octavia?" Her mother came in and sat on the edge of the bed, resting her hand on Clarke's knee under the covers.

"What? No. Octavia would kill me if I called her at this hour." She forced a smile. "No, I was talking to Lexa."

Her mother frowned slightly. "Do I know Lexa?"

"No," Clarke said. She couldn't remember what – if anything – she had told her mother about the girl who had decided to become her knight in shining armor. When they'd gone out to the Indian place, had she told her mom that it was Lexa who had brought her there first, on their near-disastrous not-a-date? "She's... just a friend."

"Those are good things to have," her mother said, smiling at her. "How do you feel about going out to breakfast? Just you and me?"

"To the diner?"

"Unless you'd rather go somewhere else."

"No," Clarke said. "The diner is good." It was just a diner like any other diner, really, but not a chain like Denny's, and when she was little, she'd always wanted to go there, but her parents had usually said no, because the food wasn't anything special and it certainly wasn't healthy. But once every few weeks (and if Clarke really thought about it, it was probably once every four weeks, and that made a lot of sense, actually...) her mother would wake her up early and ask if she wanted to go, just the two of them. 

They went now, and it was still early enough that the Sunday brunch crowd hadn't arrived, and they were seated right away. Clarke looked at her mother, at the lines in her face etched by concern, and wondered how many of them she had caused. There were lines at the corners of her eyes, too, from smiling and laughing, and she didn't think she'd caused nearly as many of those, at least not lately. 

She was tired of being at odds with her mother. Did she think her father might still be alive if things had been different between her parents, if they hadn't been fighting, if her mother had just loved him a little more? Maybe. Maybe not. The fact was, there was no going back and undoing what had been done. There was no rewriting the past. Her father was dead, and he wasn't coming back, and her mother was the only parent she had left. And she was doing the best that she could.

It was up to Clarke to make an effort.

She fiddled with her silverware, arranging it neatly next to her plate, making miniscule adjustments to try to get it lined up perfectly. "I never asked when the baby is due," she said. "Or if you know... what it is." The words came out halting, awkward, forced like she was making small talk with a stranger, and she kind of felt that way, and hated that she did. 

"She's due June 5th," her mother said, answering both questions at once.

"Do you... have you decided what you're going to name her?" Clarke asked.

"Not yet," Abby replied. "We still have some time. Do you have any suggestions?"

Clarke shook her head. "I'll let you know if I think of anything." But all she could think about was the fact that she was going to have a little sister, except that little sister would pretty much never see her, and she would have a different father and a different last name and a completely different life altogether except for the fact that she would grow up in the same house Clarke had, and the idea bothered her more than she'd thought it would. Except then she remembered that no, she wouldn't, because they were selling the house, moving to a new place where they could be their own little family without being reminded that once her mother had been part of another little family. She was glad when the food arrived because it gave her an excuse not to talk, and after breakfast she packed up and headed back to the dorms pretty quickly because Marcus was awake and she couldn't see him without wanting to say or do something childish and petty.

Octavia was home when she got back, and she hugged her tight. "Was it horrible?" she asked.

"A little bit," Clarke admitted. "But... I'm going to have to deal with it eventually, so..." She shrugged. "Right now, I should probably do all of the homework that I ignored all weekend."

"Yeah, me too," Octavia said. "Ugh. It's as if they think we're here to learn or something." She grinned.

Clarke managed to smile back. "How's Lincoln, by the way?"

"In general, or—" Octavia waggled her eyebrows, and now Clarke's smile felt a lot more real as she tried not to laugh.

"In general! I do _not_ want the details."

"I wasn't going to give you details anyway," Octavia said. "Nice girls don't kiss and tell."

"But there was kissing?"

"There was _definitely_ kissing."

"So you're... a thing now? Dating?"

"Yeah," Octavia said. "Pretty sure we are."

"Just pretty sure."

"Well he would have to be a pretty big asshole to not want to date me now," Octavia said. "And he's definitely not an asshole."

"No," Clarke agreed. "He's not. He's a nice guy."

"But not a Nice Guy," Octavia said, emphasizing the words so that Clarke could hear the capitals, and she knew exactly what Octavia meant. 

"Right," she said. "Did you ever deal with sheets, by the way?"

Octavia's eyes went wide. "Oh shit..."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Never mind. I'll get them." She was honestly glad of the excuse to get away for a minute. Not that she wasn't happy for Octavia – she was – but it felt like she was screwing up every relationship that mattered to her today, and the last thing she wanted was to find herself saying the wrong thing and pissing O off too. She needed to get her head together, regroup.

And forget Lexa. Because that's where the whole mess had started.

* * *

She was relieved when she walked into Lit class and saw that Miller was there. His face looked worse for the wear – a lot worse – but he was present, and when she approached him, he didn't turn and run. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry."

He smiled, a bit lopsidedly because his lip was split and swollen and it probably hurt to do so, and he had to be careful not to make it bleed again. "It's not your fault," he said. "You're not the one who came at me swinging."

"I know," she said, "but he wouldn't have done that if you weren't with me."

"That doesn't make it your fault," Miller said.

"I should have warned you." 

"Did you know he was going to show up and decide to go all Clockwork Orange on me?" Miller asked, then smirked. "You see what I did there? A little literature humor for you?"

"Jokes work better if you don't point out that they're jokes," Clarke said, but it made the knot in her stomach ease a little. "No, I didn't know, although I worried that he might. He's been..." She swallowed. "Did the police talk to you? Are you... is he...?" She didn't know how to ask whether Miller planned to pursue anything against Finn, or whether he was just willing to let bygones be bygones. 

"Yes," he said, "to both. They talked to me, and yes, I'm pressing charges. My parents weren't going to let me just drop it, and considering that he came at me completely unprovoked... he needs to get help. I'm not sure jail is the right place, and I don't know if he'll end up there anyway, but he needs something. He needs to be held accountable. Even if nothing comes of it, the school has already told me that he isn't going to be allowed to come back."

Clarke's eyes filled with tears, which she hastily wiped away. "That's... good. I'm glad."

Miller reached into his backpack and pulled out a little packet of tissues, handing her one. "It's going to be okay," he told her, squeezing her arm gently. 

She nodded, and for the first time in a long time, she actually let herself believe that maybe it actually could be.


	56. Lexa

She wanted to call Clarke back. She wanted to hit the button to dial her number, to apologize for hanging up on her, for being a bitch, for not knowing how to handle... anything, really. Anything that involved being close to people. She wanted to say yes, let's go, for spring break or whenever, I don't care as long as it makes you happy...

Which was exactly why she couldn't. 

She got up, leaving her phone and its temptation behind, and went out to see if Anya was making breakfast. She knew that she should be an adult about it and make her own breakfast, but right now she wanted the comfort of having someone else take care of her, just a little, while she tried to ease her own raw nerves.

"Hey you," Anya said. "You went out without me?"

"Yeah," Lexa said. "Sorry."

"It's okay. I'm making muffins, but if you're hungry now there's cereal or eggs."

"Okay." Lexa got up to make them both some eggs. "Have you ever been to Disney?" she asked, breaking the silence as she cracked eggs into a bowl and whisked them together. 

"Yes," Anya said. "When I was a kid. Why?"

Lexa shrugged. "Just wondering."

Anya rolled her eyes. "You never 'just wonder' anything, Lexa," she said. "That didn't just come out of nowhere."

Lexa hated that Anya knew her well enough to be able to call her bluff like that... or at least she told herself that she did. "I told Clarke I'd never been, and she acted like it was some kind of child abuse or something," she said. "I figured she was just being ridiculous."

"She probably is, a little," Anya said, "but it seems like it's some kind of childhood rite of passage or something for American kids. They actually have a hotel specifically for military members and families, and discounts and all of that, so we went there for a week when I was... twelve, I think. Or thirteen. Kind of exactly the wrong age to go, at least it was for me, because at that point you think you're too old to be super excited like the little kids, and you're not old enough to realize that adults are allowed to have fun, too."

Lexa tried to imagine a young teenage Anya, and the idea made her smile. "Tiny Hipster Anya."

"Pretty much," she said. "So what else did Clarke have to say about your Disney deprivation?"

"She decided she was going to take me," Lexa said. 

Anya glanced over at her, then turned her attention back to scooping muffin batter into the baking tin. "Oh yeah? When?"

"Never," Lexa said, immediately regretting bringing it up in the first place. "It's not happening."

"Okay," Anya said, and put the muffins in the oven and ate the scrambled eggs that Lexa had made in what Lexa assumed was companionable silence. She should have known better, because when she took their plates to the sink to rinse them and put them in the dishwasher, Lexa could feel herself being watched. "But you want it to," Anya said finally. 

She could have tried to pretend that she didn't know what Anya was talking about, but there was no point. "No," Lexa said. "I don't."

"Then why did you bring it up?" Anya asked. "If you didn't want me to talk you into it, why did you mention it at all?"

Lexa didn't answer. There _was_ no answer, or at least not one that wouldn't have Anya down her throat. But that might be unavoidable at this point.

"I don't want you to talk me into anything," Lexa said finally.

"You want me to talk you out of it, then? Talk you out of wanting to go? Because I won't do that."

"I don't want you to talk—I don't want to talk about it at all." _Liar._ "I thought maybe you would understand, that's all. That people like us don't have normal lives. We don't get to do the things that normal kids do."

"People like us?" Anya said. "Military kids?"

Lexa nodded sharply.

"We're not all the same," Anya pointed out. "We went through some of the same stuff, but... our lives were more different than alike in some ways."

"Right," Lexa said. "You didn't lose the parent that loved you."

"Your father—"

"Don't," Lexa said coldly. "Don't defend my father to me."

"Your father loves you," Anya said, as if Lexa hadn't even spoken. "Maybe he doesn't always know how to show it, but believe me, Lexa, he loves you. I spent a lot of time talking to him last summer, trying to figure out what to do for you."

"But that's just it," Lexa said. " _You_ know my father better than I do!"

"Maybe I do," Anya said, "but I'm not sure that that's entirely his fault."

"Oh, so now I'm the one to blame for the fact that we never speak, and even when we do it's about nothing important? It's all my fault that it was easier for him to just leave me to figure everything out on my own when I still a kid, then leave you to take care of me last summer because he didn't want to get tangled up in all of the messy _emotions_ his daughter was having?"

"That's not what I'm saying," Anya said, her voice infuriatingly calm. "But you are very good at shutting people out, Lexa. You are very good at stonewalling them and keeping them from seeing how much you need them."

"Where do you think I learned that?" Lexa demanded. "I wasn't _allowed_ to be feel. Emotions were - _are_ \- weakness. He left me, and when he came back, he just expected that I would be over it, over my mother, over being uprooted, over everything, because he was."

"Okay," Anya said. "Okay."

"It's not okay!" Lexa said, her voice rising and she needed to pull herself together, needed to rein this in... because that's what she'd been told all of her life was how to handle things. "Damn it," she hissed, her hands clenching into fists. "Damn him."

Anya reached for her, but she dodged away, realizing she'd cornered herself in the kitchen. "Don't touch me," she said. 

Anya held her hands up. "All right," she said. "I won't touch you. But Lexa... whatever you've got going on, whatever this is about... I will listen."

"You won't," Lexa said. "You'll argue. You'll defend him, because you're just like him."

Anya's eyebrows went up at that. "In what way?" she asked.

"You think that I need to just _get over it_. You think that, that..." She swallowed hard, trying to clear the lump from her throat that was so large it made her ears hurt and her eyes sting. "You think that just because she's _dead_ , that it's _done_. But that's not how it works! That's not how promises work!"

"What promise?" Anya asked. 

Lexa just shook her head. 

"What promise, Lexa?" she repeated, insistent. 

"Forever," Lexa whispered. "I promised her forever." She stared down at the kitchen tile, because she didn't want to see Anya roll her eyes, or whatever she was going to do. She sensed her coming closer, and she would have backed away but she had nowhere to go.

"Lexa," Anya said softly, "her forever ended ten months ago. There is no more forever for her."

"That doesn't mean I get to break the promise," Lexa said. She looked up, her eyes burning with tears, and said again, "That's not how promises work." 

"Do you really think she would expect you to keep that promise now? That she would want—"

"You don't get to speak for her," Lexa said, the words a growl. "You don't get to put words in her mouth. You didn't know her! Not like I did!"

"No, I didn't," Anya said, taking a half a step back, giving her room to breathe, but there is no air. "But I do know that she loved you. I know that you loved her. Sometimes..." She frowned. "I know that I've said some things that may have come across more harshly than I intended. Sometimes it might seem like I'm trying to convince you that the two of you were doomed, and that's... I don't know how things would have turned out. Maybe you would have kept that promise, if you'd had more time. But I do know that you loved each other. That was obvious to anyone who ever saw the two of you together. I'm not trying to take that away from you. But Lexa..."

"There is no 'but'." 

"There is," Anya said. "She loved you. You loved her. _But_ you've created this... this black hole in your head, because you've decided that Costia is the only person you can ever love, and that she is the only person who could ever love you. And that's not true. That's not how the heart works."

Lexa shook her head. "You don't know anything about how the heart works," she said. "Just leave me _alone_. I am tired of having the same conversations, the same arguments with you over and over again.

"You think that I'm not?" Anya asked, and Lexa could see the frustration rising like water just on the edge of boiling. "You think that this is fun for me?"

"Then why do you keep doing it?" Lexa demanded. "Why do you keep pushing and poking and trying to _fix_ me?"

"Because I'm not going to lose you, too!"

Lexa looked at her, her eyes narrowed, her tone cold. " _You_ didn't lose Costia. You weren't—"

Anya snapped, closing the space between them and slamming her hands down on the counter on either side of Lexa, trapping her there and hissing right in her race, "I'm not talking about Costia, damn it! Not everything is about her!"

"You said—"

It was only then that Anya seemed to realize what she was doing, and she backed off, shaking her head. "I know what I said." She went to the couch and sat down, and Lexa stayed in the kitchen, cleaning up the muffin mess, washing and drying the dishes with shaking hands just to have something to do.

When the timer beeped, she took the muffins out of the oven, setting them on a rack to cool, and then went to the living room. Anya didn't look as if she'd moved, and it struck Lexa then how little she really knew about her friend. 

"Who?" she asked, her arms crossed over her chest like she was hugging herself. 

Anya shook her head. "It doesn't matter."

"It does," Lexa said. "Please."

Anya sighed. "I had a friend in high school, senior year. He was a good guy – smart, sarcastic, hard-working, determined, had a huge heart but tried to keep it hidden." She looked over at Lexa. "A lot like you. When we graduated, I went to college and he enlisted. We kept in touch as best we could, but it was hard when he got deployed. I didn't seem him again until that summer when he was home on leave, and he was... different. Quieter, more withdrawn. But he said he was okay, and even though I didn't believe him, what could I do?"

Lexa felt her stomach knotting. She could guess where this was going. 

"I tried to stay in touch, but he stopped responding. Then one day I got an email, this long email remembering all the good times we had, telling me to always keep looking for the light. The next day I got a call from his mother, telling me that he'd killed himself."

Lexa blinked, her mouth hanging slightly open but what words were there? She'd assumed he'd been killed in action, not...

"Anya..."

"That's why, Lexa. I'm fighting _for_ you, even when it means fighting _with_ you. Because I will not let the darkness swallow you up like it did him."

"I wouldn't do that," Lexa said. "Anya, I would never."

"No?" Anya looked at her, and her eyes were wet with tears. "Because there are plenty of times you've disappeared into your room, or your bathroom, and I've wondered if you would come back out. There have been plenty of nights where I've tried to figure out what I would do when – not _if_ , Lexa – _when_ I found your body."

"No!" Lexa went to the couch, dropping to her knees in front of Anya, reaching for her hands and squeezing them, resting her forehead against the backs of them before looking up. "I would never do that to you."

Anya pulled one of her hands free and stroked Lexa's cheek with her thumb. "You need to never do that to _you_."

"I won't," Lexa said. "I promise."

"Look for the light," Anya said, leaning down and pulling Lexa into a hug. "It may be closer than you think."


	57. Clarke

"She's in her room," Anya said when she answered the door. She didn't even look surprised to see Clarke. She just let her in and went back to the kitchen, which she seemed to be reorganizing, if the piles of stuff on the counters was any indication. 

"Thanks," Clarke said. She hesitated, wanting to ask Anya if Lexa was okay, or if she'd said anything about her recently, but it would probably come across as weird or desperate, and would Anya even answer? She might think that anything Lexa said to her when it was just the two of them was said in confidence, and maybe it was. 

And Anya didn't look like she would appreciate the interruption to her scrubbing the top of the stove, anyway.

She knocked on Lexa's door, and pressed her ear to it, listening for an answer. None came, so she knocked again. Still no answer, but Anya had said she was in there. Could she be sleeping? Maybe she should just forget all of this. It was stupid anyway. _'Are you okay, Lexa? I just want to make sure that you're not mad at me.' Pathetic, Griffin._

And yet she twisted the knob anyway, and finding that it wasn't locked, pushed it open and stuck her head in. 

Lexa was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her laptop in front of her and big headphones (probably the noise-canceling kind, which explained the complete lack of response both to her knocking and to the sound of the door opening) covering her ears. Whatever she was looking at, her gaze was intent on the screen, and for a moment Clarke just watched her, the way her eyes narrowed and she leaned slightly forward, her shoulders pulling in just a little as she drew her finger across the touchpad of the keyboard, and how had she not noticed Lexa's hands before? Her fingers were long and elegant – did she play piano? She looked like she ought to play piano – and graceful. 

"Hey," she said, thinking maybe her voice would carry through the music (or whatever she was listening to) even if nothing else had, and took another step in, far enough that she could have shut the door behind her if she'd chosen to. "I knocked, but you didn't answer."

Lexa looked up, blinking, startled, and pulled the headphones off. "Sorry?"

"I said, 'I knocked, but you didn't answer,'" Clarke repeated. "And hey."

"Hey."

And then the silence stretched between them, with Lexa looking at her expectantly, like it was her responsibility to carry the burden of the conversation if they were going to have one... which probably wasn't an unreasonable thing to ask, considering she'd been the one to show up out of nowhere.

Clarke swallowed. This really was ridiculous of her. But leaving didn't feel like an option. So she told the truth. "I just wanted to make sure you're okay. I haven't seen you or talked to you all week."

"I text you every day," Lexa pointed out. Which was true. Even after she'd hung up so abruptly on their conversation Sunday morning, when Clarke had texted her to say good night that night, she'd replied, and texted good morning the next day. But maybe that was just habit for her. Maybe she'd done it without thinking.

_For a week?_ , her subconscious prodded. Clarke told it to shut up.

"I know, but..." Clarke frowned slightly. "I didn't know if you were avoiding me or something, after..." She let Lexa fill in the blank on her own. "Sometimes I can be a little pushy," she said. "Bossy, even. And overzealous."

"It's okay," Lexa said. "I can be..." she seemed to be searching for the right word, and finally settled on, "abrupt."

"It's okay," Clarke echoed. "I just didn't want to... I didn't want things to be weird between us." She wrinkled her nose. That wasn't what she wanted to say. Not exactly. How could she say that she couldn't stand not knowing where things stood between them? How could she say that she needed to know if Lexa was her friend, or if that was all in the past now? 

She shouldn't need that kind of reassurance. She wasn't insecure, and she had plenty of other friends. It shouldn't matter.

But it mattered. It _really_ fucking mattered.

"They aren't," Lexa said. "Not for me."

"Okay. Good." She smiled, letting out a breath that she felt like she'd been holding all week. Then, because she didn't want it to seem like that was the only reason she'd come over (even though it kind of was...),"What are you up to?"

"Going through pictures," Lexa said. "I took so many last year and I never really sorted through them." Her lips pursed, and Clarke suspected there was more to it than that she just hadn't gotten around to it, and she could probably guess what it was, but she wasn't going to be the first one to bring it – her – up.

"Find anything good?"

"Some," Lexa said. She looked back at her laptop, then at Clarke. "Do you want to see?"

"I'd love to," Clarke said, then hesitated because she didn't know where she was supposed to sit. There was a desk chair, and she started to head for that, but Lexa scooted over so that she wasn't sitting basically in the middle of the bed making a space for Clarke beside her.

So she sat on the bed next to Lexa, pushed back so that their backs were against the wall, their legs stretched out in front of them. Lexa scrolled through pictures, and some of the places were ones that Clarke recognized from the area, but there were lots that weren't, too. Most of those were shots of things in nature – trees, flowers, the occasional bird or squirrel, a stream – and every once in a while there was a picture of a person mixed in, and the majority of those were of Costia. There were a few of Anya as well, which for some reason surprised Clarke.

"How did you two meet, anyway?" Clarke asked, pointing to the screen where a candid of Anya kneeling by the beginnings of a campfire had just come up. 

"She was my RA last year," Lexa said. 

"Anya was an RA?" Clarke couldn't quite wrap her head around that idea, but then her own RA was pretty much the antithesis of Anya: short, plump, and perky. 

"She needed the free housing," Lexa said. "So she says, anyway, and I don't see why she would lie about it."

"I'm just having a hard time imagining her getting into all of the school spirit stuff, and the hall decorating competitions and that kind of thing," Clarke said. 

"She knew the students on the floor well," Lexa said, "and she's very good at delegating. So she would get told she had to do something, and she would figure out who was the most likely to actually want to do it, and put them in charge. It made them feel like they were contributing or something, and it meant she didn't have to do it."

Clarke grinned. "That's actually pretty brilliant," she said.

"She is," Lexa agreed. "We got along well pretty much from the start, even though – or more likely because – I didn't fall for her little 'Getting to Know You' ploy during orientation."

"Oh?"

"She had a big bag of M&Ms, and they got passed around and everyone was supposed to take some. A lot of people were greedy about it, and it was only after everyone had taken their share that she told us that for each M&M you had, you had to share one thing about yourself." The corner of Lexa's mouth curved up. "I hadn't taken any."

"You knew it was a trap, then?"

"Nothing in life is free."

"I guess not." Clarke frowned, because she was hearing something and couldn't figure out what it was. Finally she realized that although Lexa had taken her headphones off her head, she hadn't actually turned the music off, and what she was hearing was the strains that managed to come through. "What are you listening to?"

Lexa pulled the cord for the headphones out of the side of the laptop, and the music spilled from the speakers. She didn't name it, but it seemed to be something classical, or at least instrumental. 

"How do you not fall asleep?" Clarke asked. 

"Sometimes I do," Lexa said with a shrug.

"I get bored with music that I can't sing along to," Clarke said. "If it doesn't have good lyrics, what's the point?"

"I don't listen to music with words," Lexa replied. 

There was a heaviness to the statement that maybe should have clued Clarke in that she was better off letting it go, but she didn't. Couldn't, maybe. "Why not?"

"After..." Lexa frowned. "After Costia died, I couldn't stand to. Every song, every word... it reminded me of her somehow. Of good times, or of losing her, or of the fact that she was never coming back, and it was just... too much. It hurt too much. So I just stopped. It was easier."

"It still hurts?" Of course it still hurt. Her father's death was longer ago than Lexa's girlfriend's, and _that_ still hurt, so why would it be any different for Lexa? But it seemed like a long time to not _want_ to be reminded. Didn't Lexa worry, like she did, that if she didn't actively try to remember, that one day she would wake up and realize that she'd forgotten? 

"Every day."

"I'm sorry," Clarke said. "I would say that it gets better, but... it doesn't. It gets easier with time, I guess, but... it's still there. For me, at least." She leaned her shoulder into Lexa's. "I guess I just got to a point where I realized that I had to let myself feel the pain, or it would never really heal. It would always be there, waiting to grab me at unexpected moments, and eventually all of my efforts to insulate myself from the pain would fail, and it would be so much worse than if I just faced it, worked through it, and could remember the good things instead of just being stuck on how he wasn't around anymore."

"You sound like Anya," Lexa said. It didn't sound entirely like a compliment.

"There are worse people I can think of to sound like," Clarke said. "I know that what happened to you, and to her – Costia – isn't the same as what happened to me and my dad, and maybe I should just keep my mouth shut, because maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but I've never really been very good at that."

Lexa looked at her, then away. "Say what you're going to say."

"I just..." Clarke started, then faltered. If she said what she wanted to say, she might ruin everything. But if she didn't say it, what Lexa imagined she might have been doing to say would likely be worse, and everything would be ruined anyway. 

So she said it. Without any attempt to cushion the words, without caveats. 

"What kind of life is it when you never let yourself feel anything? Her death – it was horrible and senseless and neither of you deserved to go through that – but Lexa, you're still alive. You didn't die. When you try to keep yourself numb because you're afraid to face that pain, that's not living. Pushing people away, keeping them at arm's length so that they can't get close enough to hurt you might work in the short term, but in the long run, you're going to be so lonely and miserable that it will hurt just as bad as opening up and taking a chance on losing someone you care about again."

Lexa moved her laptop from her lap, setting it aside, and for a second Clarke thought she was going to bolt, to run away, or (probably most likely) tell Clarke to get out. 

She didn't.

She turned, her eyes fixing on Clarke's. "Maybe it already does," she said softly, and then her hand came up to Clarke's neck, and her lips met Clarke's, and pressed, and held, and her other hand was at her waist, and when Lexa started to draw back Clarke found herself reaching for her, leaning in to meet her lips again, and everything dropped away, and the whole world was only this, only softness and warmth and desire...

The kiss broke, and Lexa's nose slid across hers as she leaned in to kiss her again, but the second of disconnect was long enough for Clarke's brain to switch back on, and she realized what she was doing, and pulled away.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I... I can't do this."

Lexa's eyes slid back into focus, and she blinked, then nodded slightly, and Clarke watched her mask slide back into place, though it couldn't hide the aching rawness, the vulnerability in her eyes. 

She didn't say anything, and the silence was unbearable.

"I'm sorry," Clarke said again, pushing herself up and away, and she left without saying goodbye, because she wasn't sure that the word might not break them both.


	58. Lexa

_Look for the light,_ Anya had told her. _It might be closer than you think._

So she had been. She'd been trying to find the silver linings in life, the things that made it seem like more than just one painful slog from birth to death. She'd been looking at pictures, remembering good times, and even though seeing Costia's face ached, she was able to get beyond that and remember the warmth she had felt any time she was around, how Costia could make her laugh more easily than anyone, sometimes at things that weren't even funny, just because her own laugh was so contagious. She remembered how Costia had wanted to be adventurous, had wanted to enjoy all of the things that Lexa did, but how things like indoor plumbing were amenities that she struggled to do without, and how that had been both frustrating and endearing. 

And then Clarke had shown up out of nowhere (well, not out of nowhere, but uninvited and unannounced), wanting to smooth things over between them, to make sure that she hadn't upset Lexa with her sudden decision to start planning vacations for them, wanting to make sure that they were still... whatever they were.

Not more than friends. That much, at least, was clear now. Maybe not even friends, after what Lexa had done. But with everything that Clarke had said about getting through the pain of Costia's death, and not avoiding her feelings, not letting herself be numb and pushing away the possibility of there being something after, something more, and her warnings that being alone could be more painful than taking a chance on letting someone else in...

She'd misunderstood, obviously. She'd thought Clarke was saying something different, something more than what she'd actually been saying. She'd thought...

No. She hadn't thought. She'd _felt_. For once, she'd shut off her head, shut off all of the parts of her that told her no, you can't do this, you can't take this chance, you can't move on, you don't deserve to be happy, and let herself do what her heart – her battered, bruised, but oh-so-slowly healing heart – wanted. 

She'd kissed Clarke. She'd kissed her, and for those few seconds, she hadn't hurt. She hadn't ached with loneliness, she hadn't felt torn apart by grief. She'd felt... She'd felt the thing that she'd sworn she would never let herself feel again, that she'd tried to push away even the first time around when she'd been falling for Costia, because she'd known it was a bad idea to get attached but her father had promised her that she would get to finish high school here and she'd believed him, and so it wasn't any stupider for her to fall in love with Costia than it was for any of her other classmates who would be going off to their futures at the end of the year to fall in love, and it wasn't as if Costia would take no for an answer anyway.

And Clarke had kissed her back. It hadn't been one-sided – that much she was sure of. Clarke had pulled her closer, and kissed her back, and Lexa's heart had cracked open, but not because it was breaking but because it was expanding beyond the limits she'd put on it, the walls she'd put up crumbling down, leaving her raw and exposed and hopelessly, helplessly _alive_.

And then the moment was over – _I'm sorry I can't do this I'm sorry_ – and Clarke was gone, and she was a fool.

And Pachelbel's Canon in D wasn't helping. 

She turned off the music, shut her laptop, and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes until she saw stars. She could be angry – at herself, for opening up, at Clarke for giving her that moment of hope, at Anya for telling her to look for the light – but the truth was it wasn't anyone's fault, and anger was a waste of energy. It was what it was, and there was nothing she could do to change it. There was no going back in time, no taking it back. There was only moving forward.

At least she could take away one thing from what might be the end of her only friendship (save Anya) – trying to hide from her grief wasn't doing her any good. It wasn't who she was, either. When she saw a problem, she solved it. It had used to drive Costia crazy, because she would just be venting about something, or ranting, and Lexa would keep trying to offer solutions, and Costia had finally had to tell her that she wasn't look for Lexa to _fix_ it for her; she just needed her to listen. She just needed to get it off her chest. It had never really made sense to Lexa, complaining about something without looking for a solution, but she'd come to accept it was a thing that Costia needed to do, just like sometimes she would close herself off while she worked through things, not wanting to talk about it until she had a plan of action in place. Which had driven Costia crazy too, because she felt like she was being shut out, pushed away, rejected when really all Lexa needed was some time to recharge and gather her thoughts.

The point was, she had to deal with this. It had been ten months. She couldn't hide from it forever.

She got up, went out to the kitchen where Anya was still cleaning. She stopped when she saw Lexa, frowning slightly. "Clarke left?"

"Yes."

"I didn't even notice."

Lexa gestured to the kitchen, which was a complete disaster but she thought she could see a method to the madness. "You've been busy."

Anya smiled a bit sheepishly. "I'm procrastinating."

"On what?"

"A paper that I have to write. It's due during midterms."

"You still have time."

"I know. But it's going to take time. I just don't feel like dealing with it on the first day of spring break." 

"At least your procrastinating is productive," Lexa said. "I think they call it displacement activity – something that you do so that you don't have to do something that needs to get done but you don't want to do it."

"What's wrong with just calling it procrastination?" Anya asked.

"I have no idea. Maybe because procrastination tends to imply that you're not accomplishing anything?" 

"Maybe." Anya leaned on the counter, looking around, assessing the mess that she'd made. "I have to figure out how to put it all back together in the way that makes the most sense," she said. "What did Clarke want, anyway?"

"She was worried I was upset at her for deciding that she was going to take me to Disney," Lexa said. "She thought she'd made things awkward between us."

"Did she?" 

Lexa shrugged. "It's okay now," she said. "We know where we stand." Which was both the truth and a complete lie at the same time, but she hoped that Anya wouldn't pry. She didn't want to have to explain to her how she had probably just screwed everything up, because she'd let Anya's words and Clarke's words and her own feelings get all tangled up, adding two plus two plus two and getting seven, or five, or... 

_Nothing. You've got nothing._

Which wasn't true either, but it was true enough. 

"How long is that going to take?" she asked, jutting her chin towards the stacks of pots and pans.

"I don't know," Anya said. "A couple of hours, maybe."

"And then you're going to work on your paper?"

"Probably not." She smiled again, but it slowly slid away. "What's going on?"

"I just... there's something I need to do, and I don't think I can do it alone." She could see Anya tense, and she would have tried to reassure her but maybe what she had to say, what she needed to do, wasn't very reassuring. "I want – need – to see it."

"What?" Anya asked.

"Her grave. I need to... I think there's a part of me that will never entirely believe it until I see it for myself."

Anya let out her breath slowly. "Okay," she said. "You want to go now?"

Lexa nodded. "It doesn't have to be _right_ now," she said. "But soon. This week." Because if she waited too long, she might lose her nerve, and it had to be done. Once it was in her head to do it, she knew that it was – if not _the_ answer, it was certainly part of it. She had to see it with her own eyes.

"All right." Anya looked around the kitchen again. "Are we flying or driving? It's a pretty long drive."

"Do you have anything better to be doing?" Lexa asked. "You and I both know you're not actually going to start that paper today, or probably tomorrow either."

That earned her a faint smile. "No, probably not," Anya admitted. "I do need to finish this, though. If we go and come back to this mess, I think it will drive both of us crazy."

Lexa nodded. "It doesn't have to be right now. Later, or tomorrow." 

"Okay." Anya reached out, laid her hand over Lexa's where it rested on the edge of the counter. "I'm proud of you," she said. "I know this isn't easy."

Lexa didn't want her to be proud. She wasn't trying to earn her respect. She was just trying to move on in whatever way was possible, even if she didn't know what she was moving toward. For a second she'd thought she'd known, but...

"Anything in particular bring this on, or...?"

"It's just time," Lexa said. 

Anya squeezed her hand and then let it go. "I'll try to hurry."


	59. Clarke

Clarke fumbled with the key that she'd been given, mixing it up with her dorm room key and her house key before finally jamming the right one into the door and twisting. Raven was cat-sitting for a friend, and she'd invited Octavia and Clarke to stay with her for spring break, since she was quote-unquote 'too lame and broke to actually do anything – no pun intended'. Clarke was glad to have an excuse not to have to go home (although she may have made it sound like she was the one doing the cat-sitting to make the excuse stick) and Octavia didn't really relish the thought of a week at home alone with her mother either, so they'd both agreed.

There had been a bit of an argument over who got the bed and who slept on the couch, but Clarke had finally let Octavia win because she figured she'd gotten the short end of the stick most of her life, and anyway, sleeping on couches wasn't always a bad thing. Even if this one wasn't as comfortable as...

_No. Don't think about it,_ she told herself. _Just don't._

Raven was on said couch, her bad leg stretched out so that her heel rested on the coffee table, a lapdesk perched on her knees as she sketched something – if sketching was the right word to use for drawing something that involved a ruler. Octavia was sprawled in the big round chair with a bowl of popcorn, watching some stupid reality show on TV.

"I need a drink," Clarke said.

"It's only, like, three in the afternoon," Octavia said.

"And you only just got back," Raven added. "You haven't been sitting here listening to her heckle people who _cannot hear her_ for the last two hours." She caught the piece of popcorn that Octavia threw at her and popped it into her mouth.

"It's five o'clock somewhere," Clarke said. "Please tell me your friend has a stash of liquor."

"Cabinet next to the fridge," Raven said. "She said to help ourselves, but if we decided to throw a party we'd better clean up after, and make sure that we restocked."

"Thanks." She went to the cupboard, and found glasses in the one next to it. After looking at the options, she decided on whiskey, and poured what was definitely more than a shot's worth. She tossed it back, letting the alcohol burn the taste of Lexa's lips from her mouth. The warmth began to spread through her body almost immediately, replacing the flush of heat she'd felt from other things... 

Things she shouldn't be thinking about. Things it would be best to forget. Things that were just her body reacting to stimuli in the way that bodies do, and that didn't mean anything, damn it. 

"Where'd you go, anyway?" Octavia asked, pulling her attention from the screen to look over at Clarke.

"Nowhere."

"Uh-huh. Because going nowhere always drives me to drink," she replied. Her eyes narrowed. "Don't tell me you did anything stupid."

"And by 'anything stupid' she means Finn," Raven said, setting aside what she was doing to twist around to look at Clarke, too. "Or anything having to do with Finn."

After Raven had found out what had happened at the party, Clarke had wondered if Raven would decide to hate her after all. She got the feeling that Raven had strongly considered it for a couple of days before finally coming to the conclusion that Finn had made his bed, and now he had to lie in it... and at this point that bed might end up being in prison. Wherever it was, it wouldn't be at school, or in the frat house, or anywhere near here, with any luck.

"No," Clarke said. "Nothing like that."

"Then what?"

"I just went to check on Lexa," she said. "Things got a little weird between us, and I just... wanted to make sure that everything was okay."

"The Australian girl?" Raven asked.

"She's not Australian," Octavia said. "She just spent a semester there."

"Explains why she's not very tan," Raven said, grinning. "So... I'm guessing based on the fact that you're now pouring a _third_ shot, that things are not okay?"

Third? She didn't even remember the second one.

Clarke shook her head and went to sit on the other end of the couch so that Raven didn't have to give herself a crick in the neck to continue the conversation. "No. I mean..." She frowned. "They're not _not_ okay. But they're definitely still weird. Weirder." _Which is pretty much the understatement of the century._ And how could she be sure that things were okay, really? She'd run away.

She'd run away from the girl who'd already lost everything.

Wow, she was an asshole.

But she couldn't fill that hole in Lexa's life. She couldn't be whatever it was that Lexa was looking for. She was a wreck herself. She wasn't ready to be anything to anyone. 

Still, she could have at least stuck around long enough to try and explain. 

"What happened?" Raven asked. 

Clarke took a deep breath (and a shot) and let it out slowly. "She kissed me."

"Ha!" Octavia clapped her hands, then raised them like she'd just won something. "Lincoln owes me ten bucks!"

"You made a _bet_ on whether or not she would kiss me?" Clarke asked, momentarily bewildered before anger started to bubble in her gut... which didn't mix well with the alcohol. 

"We bet on who would make the first move," Octavia said. "He thought it would have to be you, because with everything you've been going through, she would be respectful and wouldn't initiate, no matter how much she wanted to. And I said no, she would have to, because you're just too damn oblivious. And I won!"

"When the hell did you decide all this?" 

"The night of the party," Octavia said, like it was no big deal. Like it was funny. "We assumed it would happen that night, though. That you'd end up in bed together."

"Just because you two—"

"No. Not just because us two anything," Octavia said, and she'd realized it wasn't funny, at least, but she either hadn't noticed that Clarke was seething, or she didn't care. "Because we have eyes. Because we see how she looks at you when she doesn't think anyone is looking. Because I knew when you were upset after what happened, that I could try to make you feel better, and maybe I would do okay, but the only person who was going to make you feel _safe_ was her."

"That doesn't mean that we want to fuck each other," Clarke said, wincing at how crass the words sounded. But she was pissed. What right did they have to make bets about her love life? It wasn't _like_ that. If Lexa knew, she would kick both of their asses. 

"I feel like I missed something somewhere," Raven said. "Like who this girl is to you."

"She's no one," Clarke said, then shook her head, because whatever she did or didn't feel, that was complete bullshit. "I mean, she's a friend."

"She got Clarke away from Finn one day when he decided to be a little too persistent, and after that, she kind of became Clarke's bodyguard," Octavia said.

"She's not my bodyguard," Clarke snapped. "She just seems to have a habit of being in the right place at the right time when it comes – came – to Finn." 

"She was also the one who beat the shit out of the guy who attacked me on New Year's," Octavia said. "I told you about that, right?" Raven nodded. "I guess she just has a thing for damsels in distress or something. Not exactly surprising, given what happened to her girlfriend."

Clarke's head snapped up. "How do you know about that?" she demanded.

"Lincoln told me," Octavia said. 

"It's not his to tell!"

Octavia frowned. "Chill, Griffin. It's not like it's some big secret. He heard it from someone at the dojang, who heard it from someone who knew her girlfriend. They were both students here. Plenty of people knew her – knew them – and when someone gets killed people hear about it, even when it happens over the summer."

"Shit," Raven said. "That sucks."

"It pretty much broke her," Octavia said. 

"She's _not_ broken," Clarke said, defensive on Lexa's behalf because she wasn't here to defend herself. 

"Not now," Octavia said. "Not with you."

"What the hell do you mean by that?" She hated that Octavia knew things about Lexa that she didn't, or seemed to. 

"From what Anya's said, it's only been since she met you that she's showed any signs of wanting to rejoin the world as a functional human being," Octavia said. "She was a mess, and now she's... well, less messy, anyway."

"Anya shouldn't be talking about her behind her back," Clarke said. 

"I kind of get the feeling that she wasn't saying anything that she hadn't, or wouldn't, say straight to her face," Octavia said. "And you act as if you've never talked about one friend with another friend, without them being there, which I know is a complete load of crap. But anyway, that's not the point."

"What's the point then?" Clarke asked, pain building behind her eyes. 

"The point is, what did you do?"

"What do you mean?" Maybe she was being obtuse, or maybe it was the alcohol, or she honestly had no idea what Octavia was talking about.

"When she kissed you!" When Clarke didn't answer right away, she prodded, "Did you kiss her back?" 

"Yes," Clarke said, feeling heat rise in her cheeks.

Raven, who had been pretty quiet the entire time, finally chimed in. "Was it just one of those kissing someone back because they surprised you and it's just sort of instinctive that you just do it in return, or...?" She raised her eyebrows.

"No," Clarke said. "It wasn't just that."

"So you _really_ kissed her back."

She looked down. Why had she ever opened her mouth in the first place? Oh, right... because everyone was sitting in the room where she slept and she couldn't get away from them to try and process all of this in peace. "Yes."

"Then what?" Octavia asked.

"I panicked," Clarke admitted. "I panicked, and I ran away. I said I was sorry, that I couldn't do this, and then I just ran."

"Possibly not the _best_ way to handle things," Raven said. "But if it's not what you want... maybe better to just get it over with. Like ripping off a Band-Aid."

"It's not that," Clarke said. "I just... I'm a mess. I'm still dealing with what happened with Finn, and she's kind of still obviously not over Costia, and there's no way anything good could come out of it."

"Except she makes you feel safe," Octavia pointed out. "And you got her to voluntarily leave her room, which at that point was practically 'Call the Vatican, we're witnessing a miracle in progress' territory."

"It's not like that," Clarke said.

Octavia looked at her, all teasing gone from her expression. "Are you even listening to yourself? Every time I say anything about her that is even remotely not complimentary, you bite my head off. That girl is so far under your skin, if you want to rid of her you'd have to have her surgically removed."

"Charming," Raven said dryly.

Octavia ignored her. "I'm not trying to force you to do anything you don't want to do, or that you're not ready to do. I just want you to answer me two things."

"Fine," Clarke said.

"What is the last thing that you do every night?"

Clarke slid her hand into her pocket, touching her phone out of habit. "Text Lexa."

"And what's the first thing that you do every morning?"

She knew the answer that Octavia was looking for. She also knew she didn't want to say it, because that would make all of this suddenly all too real. "Pee?" Octavia glared. "Text Lexa," she said softly. 

"Do you think maybe that means something?"

She didn't answer. Because yes, it meant something. It meant everything, in the mornings after bad nights, and at night after long days. Even if it was all they said to each other all day, there was a comfort in the ritual that Clarke hadn't felt in a very, very long time. 

Raven reached over and laid her hand on Clarke's wrist, squeezing gently. "Look," she said. "As someone who recently found out that her relationship had ended without her knowing... just be honest with her. If you're not interested in her like that, fine. If you're not ready to be with anyone, fine. You don't _owe_ her any kind of relationship, including friendship, no matter what she's done for you. But you do owe her honesty."

Clarke pulled her phone from her pocket, and Raven immediately took it away. "But not now," she said. "Sober up. Sleep on it. It can wait for morning."


	60. Lexa

By the time Anya finished with the kitchen, the sun was already starting to set, so they decided to wait until morning so they weren't driving through the night. Lexa suspected that Anya had been hoping that after she'd had a little more time to think about it, she would reconsider. Not because she thought Anya minded doing this with – or for – her, but just because she didn't want to spend most of the next few days driving.

That wasn't going to happen. If she was going to move on, she needed closure. She hadn't been allowed to go to the funeral; this was the only option left to her. Or maybe not the _only_ option, but the most logical. It would take more mental gymnastics than she was capable of to deny that it was absolutely, indisputably over, because Costia was entirely and permanently gone, if she was staring at her name carved into a block of granite.

In the morning (after too little sleep and troubled dreams) they for a run as usual, because it would be most of the day before they would get a chance to do more than just stretch their legs at a rest stop, then showered and finished up their packing. They were only going for a couple of days, so they only had backpacks, but then Anya decided she might as well bring along some of her school stuff since they would probably end up staying overnight, and motel TV might not have much to offer for distraction. And she did have a paper to write, after all.

Lexa was waiting for her to go back in and get it when a familiar car pulled into the parking lot. A car she hadn't expected to see again, and especially not this soon. When Clarke hadn't texted her the night before, she'd assumed that that was it. She'd pushed things too far, pushed her away, and now they were done. 

She watched out of the corner of her eye as Clarke got out of the car, and then stopped as Anya came out with a bag slung over her shoulder. Her glance flickered from Lexa to Anya and back again. Lexa looked back at her, trying to keep her expression blank, because she didn't know why she was here, and she didn't want Clarke to see the battle of hope and dread that waged between her head and her heart, with her suddenly unsettled stomach caught in between.

"Good morning," Anya said.

"Morning," Clarke said, but her attention was now fully on Lexa. "Are you—can we talk? Privately?"

Lexa considered her for a moment, considered whether it would be a mistake to hear whatever she had to say, and decided that no, if it was closure she was looking for, she might as well have it on all fronts. "I'll be right back," she told Anya, and then motioned for Clarke to follow her inside. She didn't take her all the way into the condo, because then they would have had to take off their shoes, but at least they were out of Anya's line of sight.

Clarke looked at her, eyes wide and blue as the sky, her hair lit pale gold by the early morning sun creeping in through the skylight. She looked uncomfortable, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "About before..." she started, but didn't finish.

Lexa forced her shoulders back under the sudden weight of impending defeat. "Forget it," she said, to spare Clarke having to say more... or maybe to spare herself having to hear it. Just let her agree that it was forgotten and they could both move on. No hard feelings.

Clarke shook her head. "I won't," she said. "I can't." 

Which wasn't the same thing as _I don't want to_ , and wouldn't that be better? Didn't Lexa want Clarke to want to forget? 

No. She didn't want that at all. What she _wanted_ to hear... 

"Kiss me again," Clarke said. 

Lexa felt as if her heart stopped beating for a second, and then restarted with a painful throb. "No," she said, eyes cast down, her voice barely a whisper even as part of her – a lot of parts of her – screamed the opposite.

"No?" 

Lexa forced herself to look at her, forced her hands still at her sides when all she wanted to do was reach out and touch her, pull her close, do exactly what she asked and to hell with the consequences, because if she was asking, that meant something, didn't it? Unless she just wanted to make sure that her original inclination to push Lexa away was the right one. "No," she repeated. "I don't say things I don't mean, and I don't make the same mistake twice."

"Was it a mistake?" Clarke asked, and maybe Lexa was just imagining it, or wishing it, but did she lean closer? 

Lexa swallowed. "You tell me."

Clarke looked down for a second, then back up at her. When she spoke, her voice was soft, and the look in her eyes softer still. "It was the first thing that has felt _right_ since Christmas. I didn't know what to do with that. So I panicked. I'm sorry for that."

Sorry. What good did sorry do? Lexa hated apologies. She hated giving them, and wasn't very good at accepting them, either. But to not accept it would make her a hypocrite. How many times had she shut down when she got overwhelmed? How many times had she walked away? Clarke had just been through hell with everything that happened with Finn; freaking out when something unexpected happened was, well, almost expected. 

"It's all right," Lexa said, because it was. It had to be. And god, she was shaking, like the butterflies in her stomach were flapping their wings so hard they were making her whole body tremble, and she knew a way to still it, knew...

"Are you going somewhere?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa snapped back to the moment with what she hoped wasn't a visible jolt. "Yes," she said. "Just for a few days. There's something that I need to do."

Now more than ever.

"But you're coming back?" 

"Of course I'm coming back," Lexa said, to reassure her, but maybe to convince herself as well. Only it didn't really feel like she needed convincing. Not with Clarke looking at her like that, like it actually mattered to her whether Lexa returned. "I'll let you know as soon as I'm back." 

"Okay." 

The temptation to do what Clarke had asked, to kiss her again, was strong, but no. Not like this. If she was going to do it again, she needed to wait until she was sure that it was what she wanted – what they _both_ wanted – and she couldn't be sure that one night was enough for either of them to really figure that out. So it could wait. It would have to.

But she couldn't just leave things like this, either, with this awkward space and silence between them, so she held out a hand, and Clarke took it, and squeezed, and she wanted more, thought maybe Clarke did too, but she erred on the side of caution. "Just a few days," she said. 

Clarke nodded, and they let go of each other and went back downstairs, and Clarke went to her car and Lexa went to Anya's, sliding into the passenger's seat. 

"What was that about?" Anya asked as she backed out of her space, following Clarke out to the road but then turning the opposite direction. 

"She just forgot something yesterday," Lexa said. "She wanted to get it back before we left."

Anya raised an eyebrow like she knew Lexa was lying (and she probably did), but she didn't push it. She just drove, switching on the radio but keeping it low. She knew about Lexa's aversion to lyrics. "You can put something in if you want," she said. "Just not anything boring."

Lexa rolled her eyes, but pulled out the little CD holder she'd brought (because Anya's car wasn't technologically advanced enough to hook an iPod into) and slid a movie score in. Not classical, but no words. 

The days were getting longer, but not long enough that it wasn't already getting dark by the time they arrived in Costia's hometown. "I'm not sure I can find it in the dark," Anya said. "Can it wait for morning?"

"Yes," Lexa said, because now that they were here, now that she was faced with all of the familiar streets and stores and everything else that had made up her last year of high school, she wasn't sure she was actually ready for this. But she wasn't sure she would _ever_ be ready for this, because how could she be? 

They stopped at a diner to get something to eat, and a convenience store for some snacks for later, then found a motel and got a room for the night. Anya started working on her paper while Lexa half paid attention to Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives (because it was _always_ on, it seemed like) and checked her phone every few minutes to see if somehow she'd gotten a text message without noticing.

Finally, a little after ten, her phone beeped, and she felt the corners of her mouth curling up even before she looked at the screen.

**Clarke:** Did you get where you're going?

**Lexa:** Yes.

**Clarke:** Good. Going to bed soon?

_Why?,_ she wanted to ask. _Do you want to think about me in bed?_ But that wasn't the sort of thing that she said. Costia would have... probably had, and that was probably where she was getting it... but not her. 

Which made her wonder, how much of Costia still lived in her? How much of who she was had been shaped by the one she'd let inside her walls, who had made her feel things she had tried so hard not to for so long, but who wouldn't take no for an answer? For over a year, she had been one half of a whole, part of a pair, a couple. Costia had been part of her identity, because to so many people, she had been Costia's girlfriend before, and more than, she was Lexa. Which had sometimes made her crazy, because they had their own ideas about what Costia's girlfriend should be like, which had everything to do with who Costia was, and little to do with who Lexa was, but it wasn't all bad. 

Because of Costia, she'd actually _had_ friends, instead of keeping everyone at arm's length and refusing to make any kind of connection to the people that surrounded her and the place where she lived. Because of Costia, she'd actually _enjoyed_ her senior year of high school. Sure, she'd ended up somewhere she'd never expected for college, but that wasn't a bad thing either, was it? She had Anya as a result, and her dojang, and Clarke. Lexa shook herself out of her reverie as her phone beeped again. 

**Clarke:** Did you fall asleep on me?

**Lexa:** No. 

A pause, and then:

**Clarke:** Sleep well when you do.

She doubted she would, but she didn't need to Clarke to worry about her.

**Lexa:** I'll try.

**Clarke:** Good night, Lexa.

**Lexa:** Good night, Clarke.

Her thumbs hesitated over the screen, wanting to say more because otherwise she was alone with her thoughts, but that was the end of the conversation. Every night (except last night, and a few others) that was how they ended things, how they tucked each other in, the words a wish and promise.

She put her phone aside and crawled under the covers, wrapping her arms around the extra pillow from the bed and hugging it to her chest. "'Night, Anya," she said.

"G'night, Lexa," Anya replied absently, not even pausing in her typing.

"Don't stay up too late," Lexa said, half-teasing and half serious. 

"Thanks, Mom," Anya replied dryly, and Lexa just rolled her eyes. A minute later, though, Anya stopped, and Lexa could feel her attention even as she kept her eyes fixed on the TV. "You know where to find me if you need me."

"I know," she said softly, and, "Good night," again.

She dozed, but lingered in that state where you were starting to dream but were still awake to know you were dreaming. But she was pretty sure she didn't imagine it when Anya got up and leaned over her bed, arranging the blankets over her before whispering, "Sweet dreams." Which tugged on a memory that she couldn't quite catch hold of... and then sleep dragged her down for good.


	61. Clarke

On her way home from Lexa's, Clarke stopped at the store. She'd already determined that Raven's friend's apartment wasn't all that well-stocked with food, and she'd decided that the least she could do to thank Raven for letting her stay was make her breakfast. She didn't have a lot of experience cooking, but how hard could it be? Anya certainly made it look easy.

Octavia and Raven were both still asleep when she got back, or at least they were still in their rooms, so she tried to be as quiet as she could as she pulled out pans and bowls and everything else she would need. Cooking bacon on a sheet tray was something she'd learned from watching the Food Network, and it would save her having to worry about grease splattering everywhere. She'd even remembered to get turkey bacon for Octavia, which she would have to watch a little more closely since it had pretty much zero fat content and would dry out quickly.

She'd considered taking the path of least resistance and getting pancake mix, but all of the recipes she'd looked up made it seem simple to make them from scratch, and she thought the results would taste better if she did... as long as she got it right. 

Octavia came out of her room as Clarke slid the first pancakes from the pan, putting them on a tray in the oven to keep warm while she made the rest. "That smells amazing," she said. "Did you stop at a diner and get pancakes to go?" Clarke scowled at her, and Octavia laughed. "Seriously though, did you?"

"No," Clarke said. "If you actually opened your eyes, you would see that there is a bowl of batter right here, and flour everywhere. This is all me."

"Wow," Octavia said. "They're really rubbing off on you."

Clarke assumed her roommate must be referring to Anya, and presumably Lexa as well, although Clarke had never actually seen Lexa cook anything. "Is that a bad thing?"

"Not if it means I get pancakes," Octavia said. "Be right back." She slipped into the bathroom, emerging a few minutes later and started cleaning up the parts of the kitchen that she could get to without getting in Clarke's way. The way she did it without asking made Clarke think that maybe it was almost a habit, the usual routine that she followed when she was at home and Bellamy was cooking. 

By the time she'd put the last of the batter in the pan, Raven still wasn't up. "You want me to go wake her?" Octavia asked.

"Yeah. It's not too early, right?"

Octavia shrugged. "Not if she doesn't want to her breakfast to be cold." She went down the little hallway to Raven's room (really her friend Gina's, but that was beside the point) and knocked, but Clarke didn't hear what was said after that because she was busy finishing up making breakfast and getting everything on plates. They would have to eat on their laps because the apartment lacked a table that they could actually comfortably sit at to eat, but that was all right.

Octavia came back a few minutes later, frowning. "Can you go check on her? I don't know if she's sick or what, but..." 

"Sure. Put the plates on the tray back in the oven. You don't need to turn it back on, it's still warm enough to keep them from getting cold. You can eat if you want to."

"I'll wait," Octavia said, and put everything back in the oven to stay warm while Clarke went to check on Raven. 

The door had been left open a crack, but she knocked anyway. "Come in," Raven said, then sighed when Clarke poked her head in. "I told her I was fine."

A quick look at her face told Clarke that she was lying. She was sweating, and her jaw was tensed like she was gritting her teeth. "You don't look fine," she said, coming over and reaching for Raven's forehead to check her for fever. It was one of her mother's gestures, she realized as she was doing it. Even when Clarke had complained of cramps, she would check for fever, and thinking about it now, Clarke suspected it was part habit, part a gesture of comfort for patient and doctor alike.

Raven ducked her head away. "I'm not sick," she said. "I'm _fine_."

"Like I said," Clarke said, "you don't _look_ fine."

"Thanks," Raven replied. "Way to boost a girl's self-esteem."

"Somehow, I don't think that's really an area where you suffer," Clarke said. "Just tell me what's going on. On the sooner you do, the sooner I can see if there's anything I can do to help, and the sooner we get to have pancakes."

Raven didn't answer right away. Finally she looked down, then back at Clarke. "It's just my damn leg. I've got nerve damage, so half the time I can't even feel parts of it, but sometimes... sometimes I can feel all of it, and not in a good way. And there's basically nothing I can do about it but take the pain meds that they've given me, but then I'm pretty much useless for the rest of the day, and I hate doing that."

"There's nothing else that helps?" Clarke asked. 

"Sometimes stretching does, or massage, but I can't really do that effectively myself."

"Let me, then," Clarke said. "I'm not any kind of trained expert in it, but if you tell me what to do..."

"I'm not going to ask you—"

"You're not asking," Clarke said. "I'm offering."

Raven looked ready to argue, but then her face twisted as the pain spiked, and she nodded. "Okay. You can't make it any worse."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence," Clarke said, but she understood. Or she thought she did. She couldn't understand completely because she'd never been in a situation like this. She'd never had to deal with chronic pain or illness. She'd never really thought about it before, and it was only in the face of Raven's pain that she realized she was lucky to have never had to.

Raven extricated herself from under the blankets, and with her instructions, Clarke got to work, stretching and massaging the muscles until all of the places that had decided to spasm eased, and relief was visible on Raven's face. "You should probably still take something," Clarke said. 

Raven nodded. "But now I don't have to take the heavy-duty ones that make me dopey," she said. "If you ever change your mind about going all the way through a million years of medical school, you should seriously consider physical therapy."

"I'll keep that in mind," Clarke said. "For now, though, if you're up to it, let's go get some breakfast. If not, I'll bring it in."

"I can get up," Raven said. "Just grab me my crutches. I don't feel like dealing with the brace right now."

Clarke did as she was asked, handing Raven the crutches that had been propped in the corner. She left the room first, and went to the kitchen to help Octavia move the plates to the coffee table. Raven settled on the couch with her leg stretched out, leaving just enough room for Clarke at her foot. 

"So what's the occasion?" Octavia asked with her mouth full. "Or is it just because you love us?"

"No occasion," Clarke said. "I just thought I would do something nice."

"Did you talk to your girl?" Raven asked. 

"She's not—" Clarke started, then stopped herself. There was no point in arguing semantics with them. Especially when she honestly wasn't sure where things stood between her and Lexa at this point. She hadn't kissed Clarke again when she asked, but she'd kind of gotten the feeling that maybe refusing to do so wasn't actually saying no forever, just for now. "I talked to her, but only for a couple of minutes. She was going somewhere. She said there was something she had to do."

"What?" Octavia asked.

"I didn't ask."

"Why not?"

"It's none of my business," Clarke said. 

"But what did she say?" Octavia prodded. "Or what did you say?"

"I told her I was sorry for running out," Clarke said. "I told her..." She took a bite of pancake, buying herself a moment as she chewed and swallowed. "She told me to forget it – that was first, before I said I was sorry – she told me to forget it, and I said that I couldn't, and then..." She felt heat rise in her cheeks. "I asked her to kiss me again. I thought... I guess I thought that would settle things, one way or another. She didn't, though. She said that she didn't make the same mistake twice. I asked if it had been a mistake, and she said, 'You tell me.'"

"And what did you tell her?" Raven prompted. 

"The truth," Clarke said. "I told her that it was the only thing that had really felt right since Christmas."

Octavia whistled, and Raven grinned. "So did she kiss you then?" Octavia asked. "She had to have kissed you then."

"No," Clarke said. "She basically just said that there was something that she needed to do, and that she would be back in a few days, and that was it."

Her roommate groaned. "That was so anticlimactic," she said. "You are the worst storyteller ever."

"There's nothing else to tell!" Clarke protested. 

"Yet," Raven said. "And that's something. I mean, it doesn't sound like she completely shut you down. Maybe she just needs some time to do some thinking, too."

"Maybe," Clarke said. "And no, it didn't feel like she completely shut me down. It felt like... like if Anya wasn't waiting in the car for her, maybe things would have ended differently. Or maybe not. But it felt... hopeful, I guess."

"What are you hoping for?" Raven asked. "You asked her to kiss you again – said you thought it might settle things, but... settle what? Because if you're just trying to figure out whether you actually have feelings for her or whatever, that's pretty cruel."

Clarke winced. "I... I guess in a way that's why," she admitted. "But... when you say it that way it sounds worse than it is."

"What is it, then?" Raven asked.

"I know I have feelings for her," Clarke said. "Maybe they had to be pointed out to me, but..." She shrugged. "Ever since I met her, I've been drawn to her. I guess I thought if she kissed me again, if I got that feeling like I did the first time of everything falling into place, everything being right, I would know for sure what form those feelings were taking?"

"So pretty much you want to know if your feelings feelings translate to pants feelings?" Octavia asked.

"Pants feelings? Really?" Raven asked, laughing. 

"What?" Octavia asked. "Would you prefer I said 'sexual attraction'? Because that sounds way too clinical."

Raven shook her head. "You. Are all. Weirdos," she declared, and went back to her pancakes.

Clarke wasn't sure what it meant that the thing she most wanted to do in that moment was relay the exchange to Lexa, to see if she would agree with Raven that they were weirdos, or whether she would laugh. She would love to hear her laugh. But she kept her phone in her pocket. It would have to wait. 

A few days had never felt so long.


	62. Lexa

"Flowers first," Lexa said, after they'd had breakfast at the same diner where they'd eaten dinner. "She loved flowers."

"Tell me where to go," Anya said. 

Lexa provided her directions to the flower shop that Costia had always dragged her into, even though she never bought anything. The owner had sighed and rolled her eyes every time she saw them come in, but she never said anything. Maybe there was some part of her that hoped that maybe this time they would actually walk out with something in their hands and a little less in their wallets. Lexa had bought Costia flowers only once when they were in high school, and rarely in college, and she wished she'd done it more.

If the owner recognized her, she gave no sign. "What can I get for you today?"

Lexa looked around, feeling helpless and overwhelmed because it had never seemed as if Costia had had a favorite. Lilies were traditional, weren't they, for funerals? But this wasn't for a funeral, and she didn't want the flowers she left behind to be depressing. She wanted them to be as vivid and alive as Costia had been. She looked at Anya, who shook her head. "This is all you," she said softly. 

"I—" Lexa started, and choked. She swallowed hard and tried again. "She—" 

"Who are you buying flowers for?" the owner asked, not bored or impatient or anything in particular, really. Just trying to help. Lexa needed all the help she could get, but Anya was right. This was all her.

"My girlfriend," she said finally. 

"Ah!" The woman's face lit with a smile. "Any particular occasion?" 

"She's dead."

The smile fell, and for a second she looked confused, and then she looked at Lexa again, and something flickered in her eyes, like maybe she recognized her after all. "The girl who died last year?" 

Lexa nodded. "Costia."

"I remember her."

"So do I." Stupid, useless, obvious words. 

The silence was awkward, and Lexa considered just walking out, going somewhere else, somewhere that didn't hold memories, but she wasn't sure such a place existed. 

"Did she have a favorite flower? Or color?"

Lexa shook her head. For someone who was capable of trying the patience of a saint with her refusal to be swayed when she set her mind to something, Costia had also been remarkably indecisive about some things. 

"They were all her favorites," Lexa said. "She refused to pick one. She didn't want to hurt the others' feelings. Because flowers have feelings." She choked on a laugh as she brushed her fingers over the petals of a rose, and then the leaves of something she didn't know the name of. "I won't pick either," she said. "Just do one of each."

"That..." The owner pursed her lips. "Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"All right." She began to gather flowers and foliage together, one of each just like Lexa asked, and Lexa had to give her credit – she managed to make the riot of shapes and colors work together somehow. Lexa handed over her card before the woman gave her the total, because it didn't matter. This was something she had to do, whatever the cost.

The woman handed her back the card, along with a receipt, which Lexa shoved into her pocket without looking. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said. "I'm sorry for your loss."

Lexa looked back at her, nodded, and then pushed open the door. She kept the giant bundle of flowers in her lap as Anya drove to the cemetery, thankfully not needing directions because Lexa didn't even know which one Costia was buried in. She watched out the window, her eyes not fixing on anything until Anya stopped. "We have to walk from here," she said. 

Lexa got out and followed Anya on a small path between the stones. "It's there," she said, pointing. "Near the end of that row." She touched Lexa's arm gently. "Do you want me to go with you?"

"No," Lexa said. "I have to do this on my own."

"I'll be right here when you're ready," Anya assured her. 

The walk was the longest Lexa had ever taken in the shortest amount of time. She stopped in front of the stone that Anya had indicated, and the words carved into the shiny gray granite blurred.

  
**Costia E Walker  
1996 – 2015**  
Beloved Daughter  
Gone Too Soon

Lexa had to fight the urge not to throw herself at the piece of rock, to knock it down, uproot it. That was the best they could do? 'Beloved daughter, gone too soon'? A handful of paltry, forgettable words that told no one anything about who she was? It was the sort of thing that you would put on the gravestone of someone you didn't even know.

But then her parents didn't really know her, did they? If they had known their daughter, they would have known that being put in a box and buried under six feet of dirt was the last thing that she ever wanted. If they had known their daughter, they would have known that she wanted to be an organ donor, and then cremated. Neither had happened, and now she was here, locked inside an airtight box where she would she couldn't even become part of the earth again, and it was _wrong_ , it was all wrong, and if they had just _asked_ her...

But they hadn't. They had done what they needed to do to find peace for themselves, and she would have to find a way to be okay with that.

She finally approached, kneeling to lay the flowers next to the stone, careful not to kneel on her... even though she wasn't there. Lexa didn't know what she believed, entirely, but she had to believe that no part of Costia was here. There would be no cool breeze, no whispers on the wind. That was the stuff of novels. Anything that she said, she was saying to, and for, herself. She knew that. She knew that she had to do it anyway.

"Hello, love," she said. "It's been a while. I'm sorry I didn't come sooner." And then she didn't know what else to say. Her thoughts were tangled and wouldn't form themselves into orderly sentences. They got stuck in her throat, the pressure building until her ears ached. 

"I wondered when you would show up."

She looked up, startled, and saw Costia's father standing at the foot of the grave, looking down at her. "Mr. Walker," she said, and her voice was a dry rasp. 

"I knew you would turn up eventually. I'm surprised it took you this long."

Costia's father had never come after her the way that her mother had, but he had also never made any effort to stop her from doing everything in her power to make Lexa wish that she'd been the one killed instead. Or if he had, it hadn't worked, but neither of them had ever much cared for her, so she assumed that he hadn't even bothered to try.

"Please," she said. "I came to pay my respects."

"You don't belong here," he said. "You never did."

_She would want me here,_ Lexa thought, but then she wondered if Costia actually would have. They'd talked about what came after death because they'd talked about everything, what they wanted to be done with them when they died, but it had always been some far off thing, a decision that neither of them ever really expected to have to make for the other, because of course they'd both assumed that they would die first. 

What would she say, if she was able to say anything at all? _'It doesn't matter where you say goodbye, because I am everywhere'_? _'My body is here, but I'm not'_? _You got me killed, and you have no right to be here now as if that will absolve you of your sin'_?

"It's my biggest regret," he said. "If we'd just gone along with it, if we hadn't tried to talk her out of it... she would have seen that her little act of rebellion wasn't upsetting us, and she would have given it up sooner. She would have gone back to normal, and she would still be alive."

The words settled on her skin, pressing her down like weights, shrinking her into herself. Lexa knew what he wasn't saying, but what he meant, because he'd said it plenty of times to Costia: 'You don't love this girl. It's just a phase you're going through.' 

"I loved your daughter," Lexa said. She had to say it. He had to know.

"Loved," he said, and the word was an accusation. "Past tense."

Anger flared in her, and it burned away everything else. She straightened her back, and considered standing, going to him, getting in his face, but she wasn't here to pick a fight, even if he seemed to be. She kept her voice calm, even. "My feelings are not past tense," she said, "but she is."

"Because of you."

"Because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time," Lexa said. "I played a part in that, but so did she."

"You need to leave."

"I will," Lexa said. "After I've said goodbye. Let me do that, and you'll never see me again."

He looked at her, and she didn't know what he saw, and she didn't care. Whatever it was, it was enough to get him to say, "Five minutes, and then you leave and never come back."

She nodded, a sharp jerk of her chin, and he walked away. She saw Anya start to come toward her, and she shook her head. Anya stopped, but kept herself positioned so that if Mr. Walker came toward her again, she would be able to intercept. Lexa was pretty sure that she was kicking herself for not catching him the first time around.

Five minutes. 

It wasn't enough.

It would have to be enough.

"I don't have much time," she said, "but I guess... I guess that's how it goes. We never have enough time." She swallowed, the ache back in her ears. "I miss you. Every day, I miss you. I still look for your face in crowds. I still wonder where you've gone when you're not at my side. Not all the time, but sometimes. I don't know if I'll ever stop."

She realized she was pulling up strands of grass and stilled her hands, resting them on her knees. "I promised you I would love you forever," she whispered. "I meant that. I _will_ love you forever. But I have to let you go. Because I'm still alive, and I have to believe that you would want me to... to live. Even without you."

Lexa shook her head, blinking back tears that burned her eyes. "I have to believe that you'll forgive me for..." 

For what? She didn't know the right words, or couldn't make herself say them. The pain in her chest that she had carried for so long was changing from the tearing of the shards of her broken heart through her flesh and through her bones into something else, something that felt more like the ache that came after you pushed yourself too hard and your muscles tore, and rebuilt themselves stronger, and if her heartache had had a name before, this healing did too.

_I'm sorry._

_I love you._

_I never meant to..._

_I tried._

_I swear I tried._

_It's too hard. It hurts too much._

_I can't..._

_I don't **want** to be alone._

She took a deep breath, and the words that she had to say, the words that had prompted this trip more than anything came out in a shuddering exhale: "Her name is Clarke."

_Forgive me._

She heard Anya approaching, and she knew her five minutes was up. She pressed her lips to her fingers and touched them to the ground, then let Anya pull her to standing, let herself be wrapped in her friend's arms and held, felt but didn't hear Anya murmuring her own goodbyes. 

"Let's go home," Anya said softly, loosening her grip, but only a little.

Lexa looked up at her. "She was my home."

"I know." 

"Now she's not."

Anya wiped the tears from Lexa's eyes with her thumbs, pressed a kiss to her forehead. "That's okay."

She looked back at the stone that was not Costia, that was no fitting memorial to the woman she had loved, and knew that there was nothing left for her here. She'd done what she needed to do, said what she needed to say. If she wasn't entirely at peace, she was a lot closer than she had been at this time yesterday.

To get back to the car, they had to go past Mr. Walker. He stepped aside, and she thought that was it. But a few steps down the path, she heard him say something he never had before:

"Lexa." 

She looked at him, and this time she did not see a man who hated her. He was only a man who had lost his daughter, and didn't know how to let her go any more than she did. 

"She would have loved the flowers."


	63. Clarke

Clarke didn't sleep well that night. Not knowing where Lexa had gone, and when (or whether, despite her promises) she would return bothered her more than she was willing to admit, to herself or to her friends. After they'd said their goodnights, she'd turned off the lights and tried to force herself to sleep, but it seemed like the harder she tried, the more sleep eluded her... even with the addition of alcohol. When it finally came, it was fitful and plagued with nightmares, and eventually she gave up and just turned on the TV, keeping the volume low so she didn't wake Octavia or Raven. She flipped through the channels, stopping when she found the Food Network without think about it. She wasn't sure whether to laugh at herself or cry when she realized what she'd done... and why.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, she must have drifted off, because she woke up when the murmur of sounds from the television ceased. 

"Sorry," Raven said, when she turned and saw Clarke's eyes open. "I thought you were asleep."

Clarke blinked, focusing on the clock on the cable box. 3:12 am. "Was it too loud? Did I wake you?"

"No," Raven said. "I had to pee."

"Oh."

Raven stood there a minute, one hand on the back of the couch to steady herself, because she had neither brace nor crutches. "I'm sorry you got stuck with the couch."

"It's not the couch that's the problem," Clarke said. "It's actually a pretty comfortable couch for sleeping."

"Worried about your girl?" Raven asked.

"She's not—" Clarke started, but then stopped herself, because what was the point? "I guess." Lexa was part of it – a big part of it – but she wasn't all of it. 

"Come to bed," Raven said. "Despite anything you might have been told, I do not hog the covers." She smiled, but there was something a little crooked and forced about it, and Clarke realized that the only person she could have heard anything about Raven's sleeping habits from was Finn, who was still... not exactly an elephant in the room between them, but maybe like a pygmy hippo? He was in both of their pasts now, but sometimes he lingered between them like a bad smell that no amount of Febreze could kill.

"It's okay," Clarke said. "I'm okay out here."

"Obviously you're not," Raven pointed out, and she probably rolled her eyes but Clarke couldn't quite see in the dark. Then her voice dropped a little, less certain but more gentle. "Maybe you'll at least get a few decent hours of sleep if you're not alone."

"That—" Clarke wanted to say that that had nothing to do with it, but she wasn't actually sure that was true. After all, even before she'd had the thought put in her head that she might feel anything other than friendship (and that might have even been a strong word for it) for Lexa, she had gotten comfort from having her nearby. Who was to say that it wouldn't work with Raven, too? "Yeah, okay," she said finally, because she really did want to sleep. She untangled herself from her blankets and stood up.

"No funny business," Raven warned, smiling at her as she accepted Clarke's offer of a shoulder to lean on to help her hobble back to bed. 

"Don't worry," Clarke said. "I wasn't planning on any."

"Good," Raven said. "You're not really my type."

Clarke climbed into the bed, which was definitely big enough for the two of them to sleep without having to get too close for comfort, and settled down against the pillows. "What is your type?" she asked. 

Raven looked at her, frowning slightly. "Honestly? I'm not sure I know anymore. Or that I ever really had a chance to find out. Finn... Finn was the only person I ever actually dated, or slept with, or anything. And now..." She gestured at her leg. "Now I'm damaged goods."

"Don't say that," Clarke said. "It's just a leg."

"Says someone who has probably never had so much as a sprained ankle," Raven replied, and there an edge of bitterness and anger in her tone that made Clarke wish she'd kept her mouth shut. A second later, Raven seemed to realize it, and shook her head. "Sorry. It's not your fault."

"It's not yours, either," Clarke said. "My point is, you're amazing, Raven. You're smart and funny and beautiful and any guy – person – who can't see beyond the fact that you need a little bit of – robotic? Ergonomic? What would be the word?" Raven just looked at her like she'd lost her mind. "Whatever it is, if they can't look past the fact that you need a leg brace to help stabilize your leg so you can be fully mobile, that's their loss, not yours. Because the only thing that stops you from doing is running marathons. I'm pretty sure there's not much else you can't do."

"There's plenty," Raven said, "but mostly just athletic stuff. So fine, okay, you win. Now go to sleep."

Clarke did. Not immediately, but it didn't take long for the soft in-and-out of Raven's breathing to lull her. She fell asleep, and she stayed asleep, and when she woke up to the chiming of her phone, she couldn't remember any more bad dreams. She would have to thank Raven when she woke up... if the sound hadn't already woken her.

She swiped across her screen so she could reply to Lexa's text, because of course it was Lexa. Who else would be awake this early on spring break? (Not that it was ridiculously early... Clarke wondered how many hours she'd waited since she woke up before texting her at 9:00 am, because she had almost certainly woken up earlier than that. She didn't think that Lexa knew the meaning of the word sleeping in.)

**Lexa:** Good morning, Clarke.

**Clarke:** Good morning, Lexa.

Her fingers twitched with messages she couldn't, or wouldn't, type. _How are you? **Where** are you? Did you sleep well?_

_I miss you._

Which was sort of an unsettling feeling, to realize that she did, in fact, miss her. She looked over at Raven and wondered what it would be like to wake up beside Lexa instead, to see her first thing in the morning, sleep-tousled and hopefully peaceful. Her stomach fluttered at the thought that maybe someday... maybe someday _soon_... she might find out. But right now all she had was her phone, and no response to her text. She hadn't really expected one, but she was still disappointed.

"Turn that frown upside down," Raven said, nudging Clarke under the covers with her good foot. "She texted, right? That was Lexa?"

"Yeah."

"So that's a good sign."

"I guess it is," Clarke said. "She just said good morning, like she does every morning."

"Except didn't she not do that yesterday?"

"Yesterday—" Was it really only yesterday? Had it really been less than 48 hours since Lexa had kissed her, and her world had been flipped on its axis and shaken like a snow globe? It felt like so much longer. "Yesterday things were... messy."

"I know," Raven said. "And now they're not, right?"

"I don't know."

"Just take it as a good sign," Raven said. 

"I'm surprised you're the one who's trying to—" Clarke stopped, realization making her stomach knot. "You're not just encouraging me to figure things out with her..." But she couldn't finish the thought. Raven wasn't that stupid... was she? She was one of the smartest people – possibly _the_ smartest – Clarke knew, but she had a pretty big blind spot, and the idea that Raven might be encouraging her connection with Lexa because it would guarantee that Clarke wanted nothing to do with Finn once and for all, and Raven could go back to him to help him pick up the pieces didn't sit well.

Raven's eyes narrowed. "What?" she asked. "Say it."

"You're not going to go back to Finn, are you?" Clarke asked. "You're not thinking that if he knows he can't have me, maybe he'll go back to you? Because—"

Any trace of good humor disappeared from Raven's face. "If I wanted him back, I would have got him back," she said. "You think that you could have stopped me?"

"No. I just—"

"I'm not that desperate, Clarke, that I'm going to keep going after someone who doesn't want me. I'm not that pathetic."

Clarke nodded. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said anything." She sat up, pushed off the covers. She was pretty sure that she wasn't welcome in Raven's personal space at the moment, and if she wanted to stand any chance of not having to go crawling home to Mom for the rest of the break, giving her time to cool down seemed like the best option.

"I loved him," Raven said. "Maybe some part of me still loves him, and maybe it always will. But if he doesn't want me, that's his loss. And he's not the same person that he was when we were together."

"I'm sorry," Clarke said again. 

"It's not your fault," Raven said. "You didn't change him. I don't know who this guy is, to be honest with you. Like... I see parts of the Finn I knew in him, but..." She shrugged. "I don't know. We can both do better. And if your girl isn't exactly the pinnacle of stability... she's got her reasons, I guess. Just don't..." She pursed her lips. "Don't get caught in the trap of thinking that you can fix someone. Don't let yourself think that love means that you have to settle for someone who doesn't meet all of your needs, that you have to be some kind of martyr, that it's your job to fix the parts of them that are broken."

"I know I can't fix her," Clarke said. "I don't think she needs fixing. I don't think she's broken. She just needs to heal. And maybe I can be part of that."

"Part," Raven said. "You can't be all of it." She looked at Clarke, her gaze steady. "Don't ever let anyone become more important to you than yourself," she said. 

"I won't," Clarke said. "You don't either."

"I won't," Raven said. "Not again."

They were interrupted by a knock at the door, and then Octavia coming in before either of them responded. "Why wasn't I invited to the slumber party?" she asked. "I want to talk about the people we have crushes on, too."

"We already know who you have a crush on," Raven said. "We already know _way_ too much about it."

Octavia grinned. "Really? You sure? Because the other night—"

She was cut off by two pillows hitting her simultaneously, and she collapsed back against the door frame, laughing, before launching herself at the bed in counterattack.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter... but at least it posted extra early? (Because I woke up before 5 am and couldn't go back to sleep. Ugh.)


	64. Lexa

They drove in silence back to the motel and packed up their things. There was no reason to stay any longer; Lexa had done what she'd come here to do, and now she was done with this place. Although she wasn't sure she would keep her promise to Mr. Walker that she would _never_ come back – never and forever were both very long times – she knew she wouldn't be back any time soon. The only thing that had ever been good about this place was Costia, so there was no reason to hang around.

But as Anya picked up her bag, ready to head to the car, Lexa hesitated. "Wait," she said. 

Anya turned to look at her, one eyebrow raised. 

"I just..." Lexa looked at the floor, then walls, anywhere but at her roommate, friend... neither of those words seemed quite adequate to describe the role that Anya played in her life. And she had to explain that to her, somehow. She had to say something, and if she was going to turn herself inside-out emotionally, she might as well get it all over with at once, right? 

She looked back at Anya, but the words still didn't come. "Never mind." 

"Okay." Anya went down to the car, dumping her back in the back before returning their keys to the little office, and climbed into the driver's seat. "I should make you drive," she said. "I think I've earned a break."

"You hate being a passenger in your own car," Lexa pointed out. "You said it freaks you out."

"It does," Anya said. "Lucky for you."

"I would drive if you wanted me to," Lexa said.

"I know you would." Anya stretched her seatbelt over her shoulder and clicked it into place. "If I need you to, I'll ask." She nudged Lexa with her elbow, and smirked at her when she looked over. "At least I don't feel like I'm taking my life into my hands when you get behind the wheel." 

Lexa knew that she was referring to Costia, joking about the fact that she really had been a pretty terrible driver. She knew the rules of the road; she just got impatient. The fact that she'd been a pedestrian in the car accident that killed her... Lexa shoved the thought away. She was supposed to be making peace with this. She was supposed to be finding ways to remember her under a good star, to hold on to her life and not her death.

She swallowed, biting the inside of her cheek until her insides steadied. "I try not to be terrifying."

"At least when you're driving," Anya replied, again with the teasing smile. "Anywhere else you want to go, or are we just heading straight back?"

"I just want to go home," Lexa said. 

"You got it." Anya picked up her phone, bringing up the Maps app and typing in their address, waiting for it to calculate their route.

"She always thought she knew better," Lexa said as Anya dropped into the holder on her dashboard. "She would put in the address and then second-guess it the entire way to wherever we were going, forcing it to recalculate three or four times to try to save time."

"Let me guess," Anya said. "It never worked."

"Not once."

They let the music of another soundtrack wash over them as they drove, and Lexa stared out the window, watching the bleak March scenery slide by, all patchy snow and brown grass, with only the occasional glimpse of green to give hope that spring would come. 

They stopped at a rest area for lunch. The day had grown warm enough that they decided to eat at one of the picnic tables outside rather than in the indoor seating area, surrounded by people. Lexa tried to make herself eat, knowing that she would probably get a lecture if she didn't, but it didn't taste that good, and she was worried that it would feel even worse sitting in her stomach. 

Or maybe it wasn't the food that was making her queasy. 

"Anya?"

Anya dragged her eyes away from the distant mountains to look at her. "Yes?"

"Thank you. For... for doing this. For giving up some of your vacation to drive me here."

"It's only a few days," Anya said. "It's not a big deal."

"It is, though," Lexa said. "It's a big deal to me."

"You're welcome, then," Anya said. Her voice got softer, and she reached across the table, her hand resting next to Lexa's but not touching. "I'm proud of you, you know. For doing this. For facing it."

Lexa looked away. She wasn't looking for any kind of praise; she didn't want Anya to be proud of her for finally being an adult about this whole situation, instead of a petulant child. But maybe that's not how Anya saw it. Maybe that was just her own interpretation, fueled by the guilt that she felt not just over the fact that Costia was dead, and that she had played a role in that, but also for everything that she had put Anya through since then.

"Thank you for everything else, too," Lexa said. "Thank you for going to the funeral when I couldn't, for being there in my stead when they wouldn't allow me to be there. Thank you for coming to see me afterward, even though I never asked you to, just to make sure that I was okay, and thank you for staying when you saw that I wasn't. You gave up your entire summer break for me, and I still don't understand why."

"Because you're my friend, Lexa," Anya said. "Because you were hurting, and you needed someone to help you through it. Because I was afraid that if I left, you would self-destruct."

Lexa nodded. She wasn't wrong. If she had been left to her own devices last summer, she wasn't sure where she would have ended up. "Thank you for taking me seriously when I said that I couldn't face going back to school right away, and finding a way to make it work when my father refused to let me take a semester off. Thank you for emailing me, and Skyping me, and making sure that I was as okay as I could be, even from half a world away." The words came out in a rush, picking up momentum as she realized just how much she owed to Anya. "Thank you for coming to the airport to get me, for making it okay with your friend that I stay with you, for... for making my room _my_ room. For making sure that I eat and go to class. For getting me back to the dojang. For... for everything. Thank you for not ever giving up on me."

Her eyes filled with tears and she tried to blink them away, but it was no use. Anya got up and came around to her side of the table, sliding onto the bench beside her and pulling her into her arms. They weren't the type of people who showed affection or emotion openly or easily; they'd been conditioned not to be. Or at least Lexa had, and she projected that onto Anya, assuming they were alike than maybe they actually were. Whatever the case, this wasn't how they were, or how she was, but maybe that conditioning did more harm than good, and maybe Anya saw that, and maybe...

" _Bitte,_ " Anya murmured, her lips pressed to Lexa's hair, and Lexa knew that her lapsing into another language wasn't accidental, because the word was both 'please' and 'you're welcome' and she was sure that Anya meant it both ways. She stroked Lexa's back, holding her until the tears subsided, and handed her a napkin to dry her eyes and blow her nose. "You're my family, Lexa," she said. "Whether you like it or not."

"I do," Lexa said softly. 

Anya smiled. "Good." She gathered up their trash and waited for Lexa to finish composing herself before going back to the car. "Anything else you need to get off your chest?"

"I don't think so," Lexa said. 

"Okay." Anya turned the key in the ignition and eased the car out of the parking space, and soon they were back on the road. Miles slid by in quiet before she asked, "Did you get what you were looking for?"

"I think so." 

"I'm glad." Another few miles, and then, "I know you said that this was just something that you needed to do, but... I get the feeling that there's more to it than that. That there's something going on that prompted you to decide that you needed to do this _now_. I won't pry, but I want you to know that whatever it is, if you want to talk about it, I'll listen."

"Thank you," Lexa said. "I'm not sure..." She wasn't sure of a lot of things. She wasn't sure she was ready to talk about it, and she wasn't sure what 'it' was to talk about at this point. She'd thought she'd made a mistake, read things all wrong, but maybe she hadn't. Time and distance and space to think hadn't given her the clarity she had hoped for... but then maybe despite the fact that she knew that real life didn't work that way, she'd been hoping for some kind of sign, some kind of epiphany. 

"It's okay," Anya said. "Like I said, I'm not going to pry."

Lexa nodded, and pulled her phone from her pocket and looked down at it. Had it really been less than 48 hours since all of this had been set in motion? Had she made a mistake, leaving when Clarke had come back to see her without anything resolved between them? What if, while she was gone, Clarke had reconsidered? 

Then she would deal with it. After all, she was no stranger to heartbreak. 

She started to type a text to Clarke, then stopped herself. Maybe it was better to just leave her alone? Give her space? But she didn't want to give her space. She wanted... she wanted her here, now. She wanted to see her face, hear her voice. She wanted to be able to reach out and touch her if she wanted to, to reassure herself that she was real.

None of that was an option. 

**Lexa:** I miss you.

Her finger hovered over Send, but she backspaced, deleting the words, however true they were. She sat there staring at the screen, and then jumped when a message popped up.

**Clarke:** I hope whatever you needed to do went well.

**Clarke:** If you've done it. Maybe you haven't yet.

The little bubble that indicated that the person on the other end was typing popped up, but after a few minutes, no message came through.

She didn't have to answer. She could just let it go. But what were the odds that just as she was typing a message to Clarke, Clarke was sending a message to her? What were the odds that they would be thinking about each other at the exact same moment, and finding the need to reach out, to break the silence, was stronger than the feeling that maybe the other needed time and space? 

Maybe this was the sign she'd been looking for.

**Lexa:** It went all right. It's done now. As done as it will ever be.

**Clarke:** Can I ask?

Which was basically asking without asking, and Lexa was sure Clarke knew that. But at least it gave her an out. She didn't take it. 

**Lexa:** I went to Costia's grave.

Typing, and then no typing, and then typing again, and then nothing. What did she expect, really? How did you respond to that? So she tried again.

**Lexa:** I'm okay, Clarke. I'm coming home.


	65. Clarke

She had tried. She had really tried. But by Monday afternoon, she couldn't stand it anymore, and it wasn't as if Lexa had asked her _not_ to contact her, right? But she didn't want her to feel any pressure to respond, either, if she was busy. 

**Clarke:** I miss you.

She stared at the screen of her phone, looking at the words as if she wasn't sure where they'd come from, as if she hadn't been the one to type them. It was the truth... probably too much truth. She erased them. She had no idea what to say to her, but not saying anything felt wrong, too.

**Clarke:** I hope whatever you needed to do went well.

There. That was neutral enough. But what if they were still on the road? Lexa had said a few days, and it hadn't even been two since she'd left. 

**Clarke:** If you've done it. Maybe you haven't yet.

'I'm not trying to pry,' she started to type, then stopped, backspaced. 'You don't have to answer.' But she deleted that too. 'I just want to make sure that you're' She didn't even let herself finish that one. She stopped trying, because she knew from experience how unsettling it was to have someone blow up your phone, especially when you weren't in a position where you could answer. 

Anything Finn had ever done should pretty much go straight onto a list of What Not To Do When You're Interested In Someone.

She put her phone down, then picked it up again when she saw that Lexa was typing. 

**Lexa:** It went all right. It's done now. As done as it will ever be.

What did _that_ mean? If she wanted Clarke to know, she would have said, wouldn't she? But Lexa wasn't exactly talkative at the best of times, and maybe she didn't want to burden Clarke with it... whatever it was. Never mind that she had shouldered so much for Clarke over the past few weeks, and it seemed only fair that Clarke carry a little bit of the weight that rode on Lexa's shoulders for a while.

**Clarke:** Can I ask?

Again, neutral. Not prying. It gave Lexa an out if she wanted it. She could just say no, she couldn't ask, or that she didn't want to talk about it, or whatever. The question in the question couldn't upset her too badly, could it?

Typing again, and Clarke's fingers tightened around her phone.

**Lexa:** I went to Costia's grave.

"Shit." 

Clarke didn't realize she'd spoken aloud until Octavia and Raven looked at her. Raven was drafting again, and Octavia was paging listlessly through one of her textbooks, theoretically studying for midterms, but most of her attention was obviously elsewhere.

"What?" Octavia asked. 

"Is that your girl?" Raven nodded toward Clarke's phone. 

"She's not mine," Clarke said.

"Yet," Octavia replied, grinning.

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Yes, it's Lexa, and... I asked how – I said that I hoped that whatever she needed to do had gone well. She said that it went all right. I asked – kind of asked – what she'd done. I assumed it was... I don't know. I guess I actually assumed she would tell me it was none of my business."

"But she didn't," Raven said.

"No. She said that she had gone to Costia's grave."

"Oh. Ouch."

"Yeah. What do you even say to that?"

"Ya got me," Raven said. Octavia's shrug was equally unhelpful.

'I'm sorry,' was inadequate, and possibly inappropriate, or at least it could be misinterpreted. She was sorry that Lexa gone to Costia's grave? Not if it was what Lexa had needed to do. She was sorry for the pain that it had almost certainly caused her, in an empathetic way rather than an apologetic one. 'That must have been hard,' was asinine. Of _course_ it was hard. 

'Are you okay?' She typed it, then erased it, then typed it again... and erased it again. She wasn't okay. How could she be okay? Clarke still wasn't okay when she went to her father's grave, and it had been years now. Well, over a year, anyway. 

**Lexa:** I'm okay, Clarke. I'm coming home.

She would have been embarrassed that the words brought tears to her eyes if she wasn't so relieved. She knew that Lexa had promised, but there had still been a part of her that had a hard time trusting that when someone went away, they would come back. 

**Clarke:** Do you know when you'll be home?

**Lexa:** Tonight, probably. Late.

**Clarke:** Will you text me when you get in? I don't care how late it is.

**Lexa:** I will.

Clarke found herself grinning like an idiot at her phone, and quickly squashed it, hoping that neither of the others had noticed. But of course Octavia noticed pretty much everything, and Raven probably did too but she was a little more subtle about it. "So can I collect my ten bucks from Lincoln yet?" she asked.

Clarke glared, although without any real ire. She knew she should be annoyed about the fact that Octavia had made a bet about whether or not she would hook up with Lexa, and that if Lexa knew, she would almost certainly kick Octavia's ass, but right now she was too happy about the fact that Lexa would be home soon to get too worked up about anything. "You haven't already?"

Octavia shook her head. "It didn't feel right, when things were shaky between you. But it seems like maybe they're not so shaky now? Unless you're just looking at cat pictures again. Or Damn You Autocorrect."

Clarke laughed. "I don't know how things are," she said. "She just said that she would text me when she got home."

"At least that means she didn't decide she wasn't interested after all," Raven pointed out. 

"There's that," Clarke acknowledged. 

"So can I tell him or not?" Octavia asked. 

"Go ahead," Clarke said. Then, a second later, "Wait."

"Which is it? Go ahead or wait?"

"I don't know if Lexa has told anyone, and if you tell Lincoln, and it gets back to her... I don't want her pissed at me for saying something when maybe I'm not supposed to."

"It's yours to tell," Raven said. "She doesn't get any say in what you can and can't tell people."

"But it's about her, too."

"And if she wanted it to be some big damn secret, she shouldn't have done it," Raven said, and Clarke couldn't help wondering where it came from. Raven had said the only relationship she'd ever had was with Finn, and he didn't seem like the kind of person who would want to hide something. If anything, he seemed like the kind of person who would want to assert his... not ownership, but something like it... of his partner at every opportunity. But it didn't seem like a good idea to ask. "If you mutually agreed to keep it private, that's one thing. But there wasn't any such agreement."

"There wasn't any discussion at all," Clarke said, suddenly uncomfortable with this whole conversation. What had she done wrong? They didn't get a say in this; this was between her and Lexa. "I walked – practically ran – away. And then... she had other things on her mind. Obviously. Just..." She looked at Octavia. "Just wait, okay?"

"Okay," Octavia said, but she didn't look overly thrilled about it. "What if she does want it to be a secret?" she asked. "Is that really what you want?"

"I don't..." Clarke sighed. It wasn't _like_ that. It wasn't like anything, yet. "I wouldn't want it to be a secret, but I'm okay with keeping my private life mostly private, at least at first. While we figure things out."

"Yeah, okay," Octavia said. "I just could really use the ten bucks right now." 

"I'll give—" Clarke started, then saw the gleam in Octavia's eye, and the way she was fighting back a smirk, and she threw a pillow at her instead. "You're such a pain in the ass."

"I'm a little sister," Octavia said. "It's my job. I'm very good at it. Just ask Bellamy."

"What is he up to, anyway?" Raven asked. "Did he go home for break?"

"Nah, he's working," Octavia said. "He's also supposed to be working on his final project for one of his classes, but I doubt that's actually happening."

"Already?" Clarke asked. "We haven't even hit midterms."

"It's a pretty big deal. They're supposed to work on it all semester. All year, really, and he got some of it done last semester, but..." She shrugged. "Other things always come up, you know? Life gets crazy, and you put aside the things that don't have to be done _right now_." 

"I can't believe he's graduating," Clarke said. "It'll be weird next year, not having him around."

"But you won't have to drive me everywhere, because I'll have the car," Octavia said. 

"Does he know that?"

She grinned. "Not yet. But I will use my little sister powers to convince him. Speaking of which – do you know yet?"

"Do I know what?" Clarke asked, looking down at her phone. Nothing from Lexa... maybe their conversation was over? She didn't want it to be, but she guessed they'd reached a logical enough stopping point. They could talk more later, when Lexa was home. 

"If you're going to have a little brother or a little sister!" Octavia said. 

"Oh." Clarke shrugged. "Sister, apparently."

Octavia cheered. "I hope she's just like me."

"I don't!" Clarke said, grinning (and grateful for the change of topic, even if this one wasn't her favorite either). 

"Hey! That's not nice! You love me!"

Raven had been looking back and forth between them like she was watching a tennis match. "Okay, _clearly_ I missed something."

Clarke heaved a sigh. She was going to have to get over this eventually, but she hadn't quite gotten there yet. "My mom is having a baby," she said. "With her new... guy."

Raven's eyebrows went up. "I take it this is not something you're thrilled about."

"You take it right," Clarke said. "I mean, it's none of my business really. She's happy. They're happy. They can have a whole new happy little family."

"Without you."

Clarke looked at her. She really had a way of cutting right to the heart of things, didn't she? "Yeah," she said. "I guess so."

"That's what's bothering you, right? That it feels like she's moving on and leaving you out?"

Clarke nodded.

Raven didn't quite roll her eyes, but it was close. "You're her daughter. From what you've said about her before, which admittedly isn't a whole lot, she seems like a pretty good mom. Maybe not perfect, but pretty good, the majority of the time. Right?"

"I guess so," Clarke had to admit. 

"You will always be her daughter, and she will always love you. Be glad you've got that. Not everyone does." 

"I'm sorry," Clarke said. "I don't—"

"I'm not looking for apologies," Raven said. "I'm not looking for your pity. Just... keep it in mind. Don't throw away what you've got because things change. Because they were going to change anyway. You left home, and you're meeting new people, making new friends... creating your own family. Maybe she feels left out, too."

Clarke had never really thought about it that way. "Maybe she does," she said. But even as she said it, something in her rebelled. Raven was right; she was creating her own family. And for the moment she was okay with her mother being only tangential to it.


	66. Lexa

Lexa's phone chimed, and she checked the screen. There was really only one person that the message could be from, considering that she had very few friends and one of them was next to her, driving, but it didn't stop a small thrill from running through her when she saw the name on her screen.

 **Clarke:** I emailed you something. You don't have to listen now – I know how you feel about music with words. But... it made me think of you. Us. So I wanted to send it.

Us. _Us._ Something had made Clarke think of not only her, but of them... presumably together. Her hands trembled slightly as she typed back.

 **Lexa:** I'll listen.

She fumbled in her backpack, digging out her headphones and untangling the cord. She plugged them into her phone and tapped on the icon to bring up her email. She hadn't checked it for a few days, and her inbox was crammed with advertisements and other equally useless stuff, but the most recent message was from Clarke. She opened it, scrolled down to the attachment, and hit play.

When the song reached the end, she hit play again, and then a third time, letting the words slide over her, working their way under her skin. Her eyes pricked with tears, and she didn't try to stop them. It was perfect. The song was perfect. And Clarke had sent it to her, and maybe she was ascribing more meaning to that than Clarke had intended, but she honestly didn't think so. This was a statement. This... this was why she had come. To find closure, to get permission – or to give it to herself – to move forward. Toward this.

She felt Anya's hand on her knee, so she looked over, sliding her headphones down around her neck so she could hear whatever it was she had to say. But Anya didn't say anything, just cast her a worried sidelong look even as she kept most of her attention on the road. 

"I'm okay," Lexa said, and was maybe a little surprised to discover that she meant it. She _was_ okay. 

"What are you listening to?" _What is making you cry, and do I need to hurt someone for hurting you?_ That was the question under the question, but Lexa heard it loud and clear. 

"Someone sent me a song. I said I would listen."

"A song?" Anya raised an eyebrow. "With words?"

"With words," Lexa agreed.

"Huh. Care to share?"

Lexa hesitated. If she shared the song with Anya, it wouldn't be hers anymore. Not solely. And it might invite questions, like who had sent it to her, and why. Questions that she wasn't sure she was ready to answer. At the same time, she wasn't sure she wanted to keep it all locked inside, either. What good had it done her when it was all pain? Anya had always seen right through her anyway. Was this really any different?

When she'd said to look for the light... when she'd said it might be closer than Lexa thought... had she known something? Or thought she'd known? Had she seen something then that Lexa was blind to?

She pulled the headphones from the jack and switched the stereo in the car off, pressing play again.

Anya listened, and Lexa couldn't help watching her face as she did, but she betrayed very little. When the song ended, she glanced over. "Who sent you that?" she asked. 

"Clarke."

She nodded. "I guess, under the circumstances, Mumford & Sons isn't the worst choice a person could make."

"What do you mean?" Lexa asked.

Anya's lips quirked in a smile. "They're pretty much concentrated angst and heartbreak... with banjos."

Lexa couldn't help smiling back, although it was short-lived. "It's not all heartbreak, though," she said softly. "There's hope there, too." It was right there in the lyrics:

_So give me hope in the darkness, that I will see the light._  
_'Cause oh, they gave me such a fright._  
_And I will hold on with all of my might,_  
_Just promise me we'll be all right._

"I guess there is," Anya conceded. "I'm glad you see it that way." She was quiet for a minute, then said, "If you want to hear more, I've got the CD."

Lexa wasn't sure she _did_ want to hear more. She didn't want to ruin the moment that she'd had, listening to that song, the feeling that it had given her – the feeling _Clarke_ had given her through it...

But now that she'd listened to one song with lyrics without completely breaking down and falling apart, maybe she was ready for more. Maybe she'd been hiding from the possibility of feeling something for too long. So she pulled out Anya's CDs and flipped through until she found it, switching it with the soundtrack that they'd been listening to.

It was every bit as painful as she feared, and every bit as beautiful as she'd hoped, and the only thing she wished, as one song slid into another, was that Clarke was with her to listen, too. The thought left an ache in her chest, a longing to not be alone that mingled painfully with the pang of guilt at the fact that the longing wasn't for Costia anymore. 

She wasn't ever going to forget her. She knew that. She wasn't ever going to stop loving her on some level. She knew that, too. But Clarke... Clarke was vital and vibrant and beautiful and challenging and everything that Costia had been... and alive. Clarke was alive, and waiting for her when she returned.

"You want to talk about it?" Anya asked, snapping her out of her reverie. 

"What?"

"Do you want to talk about it?" Anya repeated.

"About what?"

"Whatever it is that's got you a million miles away," Anya said. "Whatever it is that's got tears in your eyes and a smile on your lips at the same time." Lexa quickly schooled her face back into neutrality, and heard Anya sigh. "That wasn't what I meant."

"I know," Lexa said. It was a habit. Maybe a bad one. She'd learned very young not to let her emotions show. It had driven Costia crazy sometimes. She'd wanted Lexa to get excited about things, to get angry, and they'd argued about it more than once because she had a hard time accepting that just because Lexa didn't _show_ what she was feeling, didn't mean she was feeling nothing at all. She'd been more open in private, but the minute it was more than just the two of them, it was back to keeping everything she was feeling where it belonged – inside.

"What was this trip really about?" Anya asked, like she'd sort of asked earlier, and maybe she'd decided it was okay to pry a little. "Why now?"

Lexa bit her lip, swallowed. She could tell her... but maybe Clarke didn't want people to know. Maybe things were still too fragile, and if she said anything, it might break. But if she was wrong about this, if Clarke didn't mean what Lexa thought she meant with the song, with asking for her to text as soon as she got home, no matter what the hour, if she got her heart broken all over again... didn't Anya deserve to know that she might have to help pick up the pieces a second (third, tenth, hundredth) time?

"I kissed her," Lexa said. It was the easiest place to start. The most revealing, the most vulnerable, but it said a lot in very few words. "Clarke. I kissed Clarke."

" _You_ kissed _her_?" Anya asked. "She didn't kiss you?"

"She kissed me back," Lexa said softly. She knew she hadn't imagined that. "Then she ran away. Then she came back. That's why she turned up on Sunday morning. She wanted to apologize for running away, to try to make things right between us."

"And?"

"And I told her there was something I needed to do first."

"Costia."

"I had to lay her to rest," Lexa said. "Once and for all." She chewed her lip. "Not that she'll ever not be a part of me."

"I know what you mean," Anya said. "You didn't really get to say goodbye. You needed to do that."

Lexa nodded. She winced and rubbed at her ears as the lump in her throat reformed. She'd taken some pretty hard hits over the years in Tae Kwon Do, but somehow the pressure of holding back tears was infinitely more painful, every damn time. "I asked..." She swallowed. "I asked her to forgive me."

Anya glanced over, and when she saw Lexa's face, the way it contorted itself as she fought for control, she reached over and took her hand. "Forgive you for what?"

"For... Clarke."

"For kissing her?"

"For wanting to kiss her again."

Anya nodded. "You're allowed to want that. There's room in your heart to care about more than one person."

"Sometimes it feels like you're not supposed to," Lexa said. "Sometimes it feels like if you lose someone, you're not allowed to move on."

"You are," Anya said. "And I know I can't speak for Costia, but this is what I remember most about the two of you together – you wanted each other to be happy. When you were at odds about everything else, there was always that. It was what kept you together. I don't think that changes just because she's gone."

"That's what I want to believe," Lexa said. 

"Then let yourself," Anya said. "Let yourself believe it."

They were quiet for a little while, and eventually Anya pulled over at a rest area so they could get some dinner. While they were eating, she looked at Lexa, a smile playing on her lips. "So you kissed her."

"Yes."

"Huh. Good thing I didn't take Octavia's bet. I would owe her ten dollars."

"You were _betting_ on us?!"

" _I_ wasn't," Anya said. "I have more respect for you than that."

Lexa's eyes narrowed. "But if you _had_ , you would have been betting against me?"

"Either way, you would have won!" Anya protested, laughing. "It was just whether you would kiss her first, or she would kiss you. We were pretty sure it was going to happen one way or the other."

"How were you so sure?"

"You're not always as good at keeping your feelings hidden as you think," Anya said. "You couldn't see the way you looked at her, but I could."

"How did I look at her?" Lexa challenged.

Anya's grin softened to a gentler smile. "Like it's the longest night of the year, and she is the sun."

Lexa's breath caught, and she scrubbed away the sudden rush of tears. "You told me to look for the light."

Anya reached across the table, took her hand, squeezed it. "I know. Looks like you found it."

Lexa nodded. "How much longer?"

"Don't worry," Anya said. "We'll be home soon."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those curious, the song that Clarke sent is "Ghosts That We Knew" by Mumford & Sons. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Listen to it here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6-EUSvJchI)


	67. Clarke

Raven went to bed first, and Octavia a little while later, leaving Clarke alone in the living room to turn the couch into her bed. She hadn't received anything from Lexa since she'd sent her the song, but she didn't want to bother her about it. Maybe she hadn't even listened yet, even though she'd said she would. Maybe she wasn't ready. Maybe Clarke had pushed things too far with it. 

What had she been thinking, anyway? '... it made me think of you. Us.' Like there was an 'us' for her to think about. Like she'd earned that. But Lexa had kissed her, and even though she'd eventually pulled away, Clarke had kissed her back first, and the memory of it was enough to make her entire body flush with longing...

... And she cursed the fact that she'd gotten stuck with the couch, because what she wanted right now was not the kind of thing that you did on a stranger's couch, especially when someone might decide to get up and get a drink of water or something. She was pretty sure if she got caught, she would never live it down. Even if Raven or Octavia never said a word about it, it would be there between them, the sexually awkward elephant in the room.

But what would it be like? What would have happened if she'd stayed, if instead of panicking, she'd just kept kissing back? Would it have led to more? Would they have ended up with their limbs tangled, sweaty and sated, or would it have ended before that? Was that even what Lexa wanted, or had a kiss just been a kiss?

They were asleep. Raven. Octavia. They had to be asleep, and she knew that it took a lot to wake Octavia. She wasn't sure about Raven, but she could be quiet...

She pressed her lips together, biting the inside of her cheek to keep from making a sound as she slid her hand under the elastic of her pajama bottoms and lower, pressing her hips up into her own touch, and this was wrong, not because she believed any of that shit about it being sinful (because that would involve believing in God and heaven and hell and all of that, and she didn't) but because she was a guest in someone's house and she was on their couch, but there were sheets down, and she was fully clothed, and...

What would it be like? She'd kissed girls before, in high school. Friends who had wanted to experiment, who had wanted to practice for when the right boy came along, or at least that's what they said, but it had never really gotten beyond kissing and touching, mostly over clothes but sometimes they'd started to get undressed, but they'd never gotten completely naked, never crossed that line into what Clarke would actually consider having sex. It was all foreplay that had ended in blushing, aching awkwardness. 

It wouldn't be like that, would it? It couldn't be. Not if they both wanted it not to be. And Lexa knew what she was doing better than Clarke or her friends had ever figured out. Didn't she? She had to. You couldn't be in a relationship for over a year and never... could you? 

She tried to imagine, but then she stopped trying to imagine, because when it happened – _if_ it happened – she wanted it to be whatever it was, without expectation so there could be no disappointment. But she couldn't – didn't want to – make herself stop thinking about that kiss, about Lexa's lips and hands, replaying in her mind over and over again the way she had pulled her close, the way her fingers had cradled the side of her neck, about the way her nose had brushed lightly against Clarke's as she'd started to change the angle, to deepen the kiss, maybe, as they'd both started to surrender...

Clarke gasped, and swallowed a moan, and kept her eyes shut tight as if that would fool anyone if they happened to walk past and look at her. Her heart beat hard against her ribs, and her breathing was ragged, and even though the urgency of wanting had passed, her body warm and soft in the aftermath, it still felt as if something was missing.

No. Not something. Some _one_. 

Lexa.

She looked at her phone, at the blank screen, and sighed. She picked it up, swiped across the screen, hoping she had somehow missed the message that Lexa was home, that even if she wasn't _here_ she was _near_ , but no, there was nothing. 

_Clarke:_ Good night, Lexa.

Typing, almost instantly. 

_Lexa:_ Good night, Clarke.

She ought to leave it at that. That was their ritual, the last words that they said, their last action before sleep, or at least Clarke's. But she couldn't.

_Clarke:_ Remember, you promised. 

_Lexa:_ I don't make promises I won't keep.

_And you don't say things you don't mean, and you don't make the same mistake twice._ How many other rules did Lexa have for herself? Not that any of them were bad rules, but it made Clarke wonder just how strict a code she had devised for herself to live by?

_Clarke:_ Okay. Good night again, Lexa.

_Lexa:_ Good night again, Clarke.

Clarke didn't think that she would sleep, but the lassitude and endorphins of the afterglow decided otherwise. 

She was startled awake a few hours later by her phone buzzing, and had she really fallen asleep with it in her hand? She blinked at the screen, too bright in the dark apartment. 

**Lexa:** I'm home.

Clarke wasn't prepared for the intense feeling of relief that came from those two little words. She felt as if she had been under water for too long, and had finally been able to surface for air. 

**Clarke:** Can I see you?

She'd sent the words before she could really think about them, how pushy they were, how forward. It was the middle of the night, and Lexa had been in a car all day, and she was probably exhausted and just wanted to sleep. Alone.

**Lexa:** Now?

_Yes._ But no. 

**Clarke:** Tomorrow. Or I guess today. Later.

**Lexa:** Yes. 

**Clarke:** I'll bring you breakfast.

A pause before the response, and maybe it meant nothing. Maybe it meant that she was carrying her things into the condo, or that Anya had said something to her to distract her, or any number of things. It didn't have to _mean_ anything. 

**Lexa:** You don't have to do that.

**Clarke:** I want to.

Another pause. And it was probably only a second or two but it felt like an eternity.

**Lexa:** Okay. 

**Clarke:** Just text me when you wake up.

**Lexa:** I always do.

_Right._

**Clarke:** Right. Sleep well, Lexa.

**Lexa:** And you.

Clarke didn't say good night for a third time. She let it go, and hoped that Lexa really would sleep well. Now that Clarke was awake, though, she wasn't sure whether she would be able to get back to sleep. In the end, she went to the liquor cabinet and poured herself a shot, letting the alcohol soothe her system so that she was able to drop off, at least for a little while.

For once she woke up before Lexa, or at least before Lexa texted her, but maybe that made sense considering how late Lexa had been up the night before. She showered and dressed, readying herself to leave as soon as Lexa texted her. 

When the message finally came, it was still early for ordinary people – especially ordinary college students – but late for Lexa. Clarke hoped it was because she'd slept in, and not because she'd waited to text her until what she deemed a 'reasonable hour'. 

**Lexa:** Good morning, Clarke.

**Clarke:** Good morning, Lexa. Are you hungry?

**Lexa:** Starved. 

**Clarke:** I'll be right over.

**Lexa:** You really don't have to do that.

**Clarke:** I already told you that I want to. You're not the only one who doesn't say things she doesn't mean.

Which wasn't necessarily always true, but it was true now, and Clarke had sort of made it a rule that she would always try to be as honest as she could be with Lexa. She didn't want there to be any room for doubt. 

**Lexa:** I'll see you soon, then.

Clarke scribbled a note to her friends, letting them know where she'd gone so they wouldn't worry, and then stopped at a diner, ordering breakfast for herself and Lexa and Anya, because it seemed rude not to after the number of times that Anya had fed her, and when it was all packaged up, drove over to Anya's condo, parking next to her car and going to the door to ring the bell.

The front door buzzed, and when she got upstairs, Lexa was already at the door, still in her pajamas, her hair tousled, and the urge to pull her into her arms, to hold her tight, to kiss her like it was something that was just natural between them was almost overwhelming. If she hadn't had her hands full, she might have. 

"Can you...?" Clarke asked, holding out the bag.

Lexa took it, and waited for Clarke to kick off her shoes. Once they were inside, she put the food on the counter as Clarke took off her coat and hung it up, and then they stood facing each other in the middle of the living room, neither of them quite knowing what to do.

Lexa looked down at her feet, then back up at Clarke. "We should probably eat before it gets cold," she said. "I'll get Anya."

There was the tiniest hesitation as she said it, like maybe she didn't want to, maybe she wanted it to be just the two of them, but maybe Clarke just imagined it. Whether she had or not, they were soon joined by Anya, who thanked Clarke for bringing them breakfast... and then grabbed a lap tray and retreated back to her room, claiming she wasn't yet fit for human company.

Clarke may or may not have imagined that Anya winked at her as she said it.

They sat down at the breakfast bar, because it was easier than balancing plates on their knees, and Clarke started to eat, but Lexa didn't. She picked up her fork, then set it down again, and looked at Clarke. 

"I can't promise," she said softly.

Clarke set down her own fork. "Can't promise what, Lexa?"

"I can't promise that it will be easy."

"Love never is," Clarke said, before she realized what she was saying. For a second she thought about taking the words – word – back, but no. Whatever this was... whether they were falling in love or already there... the word applied. The feeling was there, and there was no taking it back.

Lexa looked at her, wide-eyed, blinked. 

"I don't want easy," Clarke said. "I just want you."


	68. Lexa

Lexa watched Anya shut the door to her room, then looked back at Clarke. They sat down at the counter to eat, Clarke in the spot that Lexa had once thought of as her own, but that she now couldn't think of as anyone's but Clarke's (except sometimes Anya sat there). She wondered when Clarke had become a... fixture, she supposed, and how she hadn't noticed at the time.

Clarke picked up her fork, speared a bite of eggs and lifted it to her mouth. Lexa knew she should eat, but at the moment, she wasn't sure she was actually capable of swallowing. It wasn't the lump in her throat this time, though... it was the butterflies in her stomach. She was nervous. She didn't _get_ nervous. The last time...

The last time was with Costia. The last time she'd felt like this, it had been because she was feeling things that she hadn't thought herself capable of feeling about a girl that she was pretty sure she shouldn't feel them about, and she had been caught between wanting to say something and wanting to run away. 

Had there been a song running through her head then, too? If there had been, she didn't remember it now. Now it was just one line, over and over again: _Just promise me we'll be all right._

"I can't promise."

She looked at Clarke, searching her face for a reaction, wondering if somehow she would instinctively know what she was talking about, but of course it didn't work that way. Not in real life, and theirs was not a storybook romance.

Was it a romance at all? 

What if somehow, even now, she had it all wrong?

Clarke looked at her, set down her fork, gave her her full attention. "Can't promise what, Lexa?"

_Can't promise what, Lexa?_

_Shit._

_I can't promise that we'll be all right. I can't promise that I won't be a mess, that I won't still try to push you away, pretending it's for your own good, when really I'm trying to protect myself from ever feeling again what I did... what I still do... when I inevitably lose you, one way or another. I can't promise that I will always be the person you want me to be, need me to be... that I will even know who that is. I can't promise I'll be better._

How could she say all that, without saying all that? What words did she have to explain the tangled knot of emotions that she needed to express, to give Clarke fair warning? How did she tell Clarke that she wanted to try, but she wasn't at all sure she could succeed?

She bit the inside of her lip, and tried anyway. "I can't promise that it will be easy."

Clarke's expression softened, the slight edge of wariness at what might be coming melting away. "Love never is."

Lexa felt her eyes go wide, felt herself blink, swallow, felt the word settle in the air between them, threatening to sink them both... or to lift them up. She could see it in Clarke's eyes, too, that she had said it without knowing she was going to say it, and now she was trying to decide if there was any way to take it back, or if she even wanted to. 

_Say something!_

But there was nothing. Her head was an empty chamber, echoing with the pounding of her heart, which thrilled at the word and then sank. Love was messy, and complicated, and not at all the right word for this, was it? 

What other word was there?

_Say something, damn it!_

But Clarke spoke first, because she was braver than Lexa could ever hope to be. "I don't want easy," she said. "I just want you."

Lexa's eyes filled with tears, and she reached up to wipe them away, but Clarke caught her hand, stopping her, her eyes never leaving Lexa's, until she was too close for Lexa to focus, and her eyes dropped closed as Clarke's lips brushed her cheeks, and when she kissed Lexa they were damp with the salt of her tears, and it only made a fresh wave rise up as the last of the walls she'd tried to put up to keep this girl out crumbled.

Her hand came up, her fingers threaded through Clarke's hair, her thumb tracing the line of her jaw, and she melted into the kiss, letting herself have this, knowing it might be a single moment, never to be repeated, or it might be the first in a lifetime of moments, but it didn't matter either way because here, now, this was what she wanted, what _they_ wanted, what they _needed_ , and if her walls around her heart were shattering, leaving it exposed in all of its raw, battered, scarred glory... then Clarke was cradling it between her palms as if she understood how fragile it was... and how strong it could be.

Lexa was the first to pull away this time, her eyes opening slowly, as if from a dream she wasn't ready to part with, but then she didn't have to, did she, because this was real. "Clarke..."

"Lexa." 

"Are you sure?" _Because if you run away again... it might just break me._

Clarke nodded, letting her forehead rest against Lexa's, the tips of their noses brushing with the movement. "I'm sure." A flicker of doubt as she looked Lexa in the eye, and it really was hard to focus on something this close. "Are you?"

_Am I sure this will work? No. But who can ever be sure of that? Am I sure I'm willing to take the chance?_ "Yes."

The doubt was gone, replaced by a smile that filled Clarke's eyes, and when people described blue it was always cold like ice or distant like the sky, or dangerous like the ocean... but Clarke's eyes were none of those things. They were warm and close and safe, and when Lexa had told Anya she wanted to come home, it was not this _place_ she was thinking of, but this. This person, this feeling.

It made her chest ache, her heart too full, and somewhere in the back of her mind, guilt still nagged, but she had to live her life. She _deserved_ to live her life, even if Costia didn't get that chance. _Because_ Costia didn't get that chance. Wasn't it her responsibility to live as much as she could to make up for everything Costia would never get to do?

"Lexa?" 

"Sorry," Lexa said. "I just..."

"It's okay," Clarke said, and from the look in her eyes – a little bit of worry but a lot of understanding – she knew that she meant it. 

"Our food is getting cold," Lexa said. "We should probably eat."

"Probably," Clarke agreed, but it took a moment more for them to pull away from each other, as if losing physical contact would break the moment, and they would discover that it was only a dream after all.

They ate, and if the food wasn't quite as warm as they might have liked, neither of them complained. Lexa found herself fighting the urge to keep looking over at Clarke, because it would be creepy to watch her eat, but there was a sort of surreality to the whole situation that had some part of her convinced that if she looked away for too long the whole scene would dissolve.

Finally she put her left hand on the counter between them, just letting it rest there, her intention clear (she thought) but not wanting to force Clarke into anything. But as soon as her hand was still, Clarke's settled over it, and their fingers laced together like they were meant to be that way, and wasn't it nice how Clarke was left-handed and Lexa was right, so they could do this without either of them losing their dominant hands?

Anya's door opened, and Lexa felt Clarke twitch, and she loosened her grip to let her pull away if she wanted to, but then Clarke's fingers closed around hers again, and they left their hands there for Anya to see and make of it what she would. 

She noticed – Lexa could tell from the way her eyebrows went up slightly, not so much in surprise as in question, and then lowered again at Lexa's faint nod – but she didn't say anything. She just put the tray away, threw out the container the food had been in, and dropped her fork into the dishwasher. 

"Any plans for the day?" Clarke asked her, and Lexa wondered suddenly if she was the sort of person who couldn't stand silence... but no, she didn't think that was true. Maybe she just wanted to be polite. Or maybe she was a little nervous, like she was meeting Lexa's parents for the first time, except Anya wasn't Lexa's parent, and she already knew her. On the other hand, Anya was protective – she was sure Clarke had picked up on that – and things had changed. 

"I should really get to work on my paper," Anya said. "Which I don't _want_ to do, obviously, but I'm going to have to do it eventually, and better to do it sooner than later. Which you can feel free to take as a word of friendly advice from someone who has been doing this for a long time. To quote... someone, I actually have no idea who, 'Procrastination is like masturbation, in the beginning it feels good, but in the end, you're just fucking yourself.'"

She grinned, and Clarke choked, and Lexa slid her hand from Clarke's to rub her back. "You get used to it eventually," she said, rolling her eyes at Anya, but she was fighting a smile. "Just wait until she starts talking nerdy to you."

Clarke coughed, and for a second Lexa was worried that she might actually be choking, but finally she heard her inhale. "You. Are All. Weirdos."

"Sam the Eagle," Anya said. "I know that one."

Lexa smiled. No, grinned. She grinned, and how long had it been since she'd done that? Most of the smiles she'd managed over the last ten months had been forced; this was entirely natural, and it felt good. It felt good to smile, and laugh, and there was a part of her that wondered what the price for it would be, because there was always a price to be paid, wasn't there? Or maybe that was a self-fulfilling prophecy that she'd created in the depths of depression. Maybe there really could be second chances in life. 

And love.

She wasn't quite ready to say it, not yet, not out loud, but the thought echoed in her head, and in her heart: _I love you too._


	69. Clarke

"So," Anya said, leaning against the kitchen counter as she waited for kettle to boil. "What about you? Do you have any plans for your spring break?"

Lexa's hand slid from her back, and Clarke glanced over at her, saw her smile start to fade, and she silently cursed Anya for coming out of her room in the first place, breaking whatever moment they were sharing. Not that Lexa looked unhappy... but it had been nice for their world to be no bigger than the pair of them. 

"Not really," Clarke said. "I'm just happy to I don't have any papers or projects to do."

"Really?" Anya asked. "Not even for my class?"

_Shit,_ Clarke thought. _Is that a hint? Am I forgetting something?_

Anya laughed. "Wow, the look on your face," she said. "How to Make a Freshman Panic in One Easy Step: Make them think that they forgot an assignment."

"Did I?" Clarke asked.

"No," Anya said. "Not unless you want to get a head start on your project for the end of the semester. Which is everyone's favorite – a _group_ project."

Lexa groaned, and she wasn't even the one who had to do it. "Tell me that that wasn't your idea," she said. 

"What do you think you're going to do to me if I say it was?" Anya asked. 

"I know where you sleep," Lexa said. 

"I know where you sleep, too, _liebchen_ ," Anya said, smiling a sweet, vaguely terrifying smile. 

Then they both laughed, and Clarke was left looking back and forth between them, wondering again if she'd somehow missed something, or if they were just always like this. It didn't seem likely, given how Lexa had been when she first met her, but they'd known each other longer than that, since before Lexa lost Costia, even, so maybe they were finding their way back to how things had been between them before it all went to hell.

It occurred to her then that she really didn't know that much about Lexa, and Lexa didn't know that much about her either. Sure, they knew each other's tragedies. They knew the places where they had broken and healed imperfectly, or failed to mend at all. But she didn't even know when her birthday was, or her favorite color, or what kind of ice cream she liked best, or if she liked ice cream at all. Maybe she was lactose intolerant.

"In any case," Anya said, "it wasn't my idea. I tried – unsuccessfully – to talk him out of it, but he insisted that it was a great idea because it would force students to learn to deal with other points of view or something. I think he just liked the idea of having to grade fewer projects."

"Aren't you the one who does the grading?" Clarke asked. 

"Shh," Anya said. "Do not throw your logic around in the halls of academia. There is no place for it."

Clarke smiled. "Right. How big do the groups have to be?"

"A minimum of three people, maximum of five," Anya said, "keeping in mind that each group will be expected to deliver the same amount of work, regardless of the number of members. So bigger group equals less work for each person individually."

"Or more people for the person who ends up doing all of the work to be pissed off at," Lexa said. 

"Or that," Anya agreed. 

"Groups aren't going to be assigned, are they?" Clarke asked, inwardly cringing.

"No."

"And if there's, like, leftover people at the end, no one is going to be forced to take on a group member?" Because there was always leftover people at the end when groups weren't assigned, and the people that couldn't find a group might just be shy or not really know anyone in the class that well... but usually there was a _reason_ they ended up without anyone extending an invitation.

"If there's one or two people left at the end, we'll have to figure that out," Anya said. "If there's three, they just become a group. Why?"

"Because," Clarke said. "I've got Octavia and Raven in that class with me. That's three."

"You're welcome," Anya said, the corner of her mouth quirking up.

"What do you mean?" Clarke asked. "You said that it wasn't your idea."

"I know. But he wanted groups of four to six. I said that three to five was much more manageable."

"You did it so that the three of us could work together without having to deal with anyone else," Clarke said. 

Anya's eyes opened wide, trying (and failing) to look innocent. "Would I do that?" she asked. 

"Thank you," Clarke said. 

Anya just winked, and turned her attention to making her tea. She offered some to both of them, but only Lexa accepted. "Black, green, or herbal?" Anya asked.

"Green," Lexa said. "With honey."

Anya looked at her, one eyebrow raised. "Do you want honey with your tea, or tea with your honey?" 

Lexa rolled her eyes. "I like honey."

"It overpowers the flavor of the tea!" Anya said.

"Green tea barely _has_ a flavor!" 

"Then why do you drink it?" Anya demanded, clearly exasperated.

"... Because it would be weird to just drink honey?"

Anya snorted. "You see what I live with?" she asked Clarke. 

"I see," Clarke said. What she saw was more life in Lexa in the past few minutes than she had in the last several weeks. What she saw was a spark in her eyes that she hadn't known existed to miss, but now that she'd seen it, she hoped never to see it disappear again. 

Was this the result of going to see Costia's grave, and finally putting her to rest? Or was it something else? It wasn't her – at least not entirely her – but maybe she'd played some part in it? 

Or maybe it was just wishful thinking, that with everything that Lexa had done for her, she'd been able to give her something in return. It would be nice to think that this hadn't all been one-sided up to this point... but even if it had, it wouldn't be going forward. They were in this – whatever this was, whatever it was becoming – together, and Clarke didn't take that lightly.

Once Anya gave her her tea, Lexa wrapped her hands around the mug for a moment, then picked it up. "I'm going to go get dressed," she said. "I'll be right back." She waited until Clarke looked up, caught her eye, not exactly like she was asking for permission – Clarke was pretty sure that Lexa didn't ask anyone's by-your-leave to do anything – but for acknowledgment of some kind. Maybe she just wanted to make sure that Clarke was okay being left alone with Anya.

Clarke was tempted to say, 'I'll come with you,' but that might be pushing things too far, too fast, and would likely end up being awkward for both of them, so she just nodded. And maybe Lexa's hand brushing her arm was accidental, but maybe it wasn't. Either way, there was something comforting in it.

They both watched her go, and Anya waited until the latch of the door (bathroom or bedroom, Clarke wasn't sure) clicked shut, then turned to Clarke. "Thank you," she said.

"For what?" Clarke asked, genuinely confused.

"For... being here, I guess. For not giving up on her." Anya's voice had softened, and there was something just slightly hesitant about it, like she was revealing more of herself than she was truly comfortable with.

Clarke's eyebrows went up. "Not giving up on her? She was the one who was looking out for me."

"Maybe," Anya said, "but that's sorted out now, isn't it? He's gone. And you're still here."

"I wasn't going to just walk away. She's my friend." _More than my friend, maybe. No, definitely more than a friend, but maybe less than a girlfriend right now, and even if it never gets there, she'll still be... special._

"She doesn't always make that easy," Anya said, "and I could see it in your face, the way you looked at her like you weren't quite sure who she was, like this wasn't the girl that you'd gotten to know. And it's not. She's not. Today, this morning... she's more herself than she has been since before Costia died. And you're part of that. So thank you."

_I didn't do it for you,_ Clarke thought, but Anya knew that. "You're welcome, I guess," she said, feeling awkward about it, even as warmth kindled in her belly at the confirmation of what she'd thought, or hoped, about the effect she'd had on Lexa. But she hadn't done anything special. She'd just... come back. She'd realized she'd made a mistake, and come back, and then waited for Lexa to come back, waited (and not very patiently) for them both to be in the place they needed to be to figure things out.

Anya came closer, leaning on the counter directly across from Clarke. "I just want to say something, and I hope you can take it in the spirit that it's meant." 

Clarke's stomach was instantly in knots, because she knew that Anya was protective of Lexa, and also capable of inflicting a lot of pain on a person should she need to. But she was pretty sure that Anya wasn't going to threaten her... but only pretty sure.

"I think I've actually said this before, but it bears repeating: when she does something, it's never at anything less than 100%," Anya said. "She doesn't know how to be anything less than all-in. If you can't say the same..." She pursed her lips, frowned. "Just be honest with her. Always be honest with her, even if it hurts."

"I'm not going to hurt her," Clarke said. "That's the last thing I want to do."

"Not wanting to and not doing aren't the same thing," Anya said. "But she trusts you. And that's good enough for me."

_No pressure,_ Clarke thought. But she heard the words underneath what Anya was saying: Don't be careless with her heart. It's only just started to mend. 

_Yeah, well, mine too,_ she thought. The situation was different - _very_ different – but they were both worse for the wear from their last encounters with giving away any part of themselves, and maybe they both ought to be wearing signs that read Proceed With Caution. 

Lexa came back out, dressed in jeans and a soft green sweater, her hair braided back out of her face, her mug of tea still in her hand. She came up beside Clarke, and rather than taking a seat, she stood, her hand resting on the nape of her neck, and there was no way to mistake it for an accident now. "I hope you weren't talking about me," she said.

"Of course we were," Anya replied.

Lexa's lips quirked. "Lies, every word," she said, looking at Clarke. "Whatever she said about me."

"What if it was nice things?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa considered that, and her eyes were bright even as she faked a frown. "Then it was definitely lies."

"Definitely," Anya agreed. 

Lexa looked at her and stuck out her tongue, which seemed so out of character, Clarke couldn't help laughing. But if Anya was right, if this was who Lexa really was underneath the heartache and out from behind the walls... Clarke was pretty sure she could get used to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not exactly about the story, but I wanted to show you all my tattoo that I got on Wednesday, in honor of Lexa, and Clexa, and myself, and every badass person out there who struggles with depression and anxiety, who fights every day just to get through the day. _Oso gonplei nou ste odon nowe._


	70. Lexa

"Should I be letting you go?" Lexa asked, once Anya had retreated to her room to go take a shower. Not that she wanted to let Clarke go. She didn't. Not even a little bit. After the last few days and everything it had dragged up, and how it had all seemed to fade the minute she'd seen Clarke (and the entire world had disappeared as they kissed...) the last thing she wanted was to see her go. But she said it anyway, because she didn't want Clarke to feel pressured to stay. She didn't want her to feel obligated. "Let you get on with whatever it was you had planned to do today?"

"You _are_ what I planned to do today," Clarke said, and then her cheeks flushed as it dawned on her what she'd said, and how it sounded. "I mean... I..."

Lexa could feel the heat in her own cheeks, but she couldn't help smiling. "I know what you mean," she reassured her. "I think I do, anyway." She meant the words to be teasing, but Clarke still looked flustered.

"Why don't you tell me, then?" Clarke asked. "So I don't say anything stupid again."

"It's not stupid," Lexa said, and it came out with a little more force than she'd intended. "You're not stupid." She wasn't sure why it bothered her to hear Clarke say that, or imply it, when clearly she knew that it wasn't true. But maybe she was just reading too much into things. 

"No, but I do sometimes put my foot in my mouth," Clarke said. "Should we clean up?"

There really wasn't much of a mess, since their food had come in takeout containers, but they threw them out and put their silverware in the dishwasher, and wiped down the counters for good measure... and then Lexa wasn't sure where to go from there. 

Had it been like this with Costia? This awkwardness, this indecision? 

No. It hadn't. Because with Costia she had been resisting it, right up until the moment she surrendered, and she hadn't known then what heartbreak felt like, or at least not the kind that came from giving yourself to someone completely and then losing them. Now she knew, and it had made her cautious, uncertain. 

But she didn't want Clarke to change her mind about staying, either. Which meant she had to say something. 

"Why didn't you go home for break?" she finally asked. "It wasn't—" She stopped herself. She'd been about to ask Clarke if it was because of her, but she wasn't sure she actually _wanted_ the answer to that question. If it was no, then it would make her sound egocentric, and if it was yes... did she really want to know that? That Clarke had made a decision based on her? She wasn't sure she was ready for that kind of responsibility. 

"I didn't feel like dealing with my mom," Clarke said. "And her new..." She wrinkled her nose. "This language really needs better words for people that you care about."

"What do you mean?" Lexa asked, not because she didn't understand what Clarke was trying to say, and certainly not because she didn't agree, but she was curious as to thinking behind the statement. 

"I mean, it feels like after a certain point – and I don't necessarily mean age, although that's part of it – but after a certain point the words 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' start to feel... not quite right. Saying 'my mother's boyfriend' feels silly. Mom's aren't supposed to have _boy_ friends, you know?"

Lexa nodded slightly, the corners of her mouth curving up slightly, because Clarke was right. Not that her father had ever dated after her mother died, but parents weren't supposed to have boy- or girlfriends. "I can see your point," she said. "It also feels a bit... reductive, at times. Maybe it's just my perception, but considering that even very small children will refer to their – can you even really call it a crush at that age? – as their boyfriend or girlfriend, although they have to be getting that word from somewhere, and what the hell are adults thinking, applying that label to the relationship of a kindergartener?" Lexa stopped herself, realizing that she'd lost her original point somewhere in the tangle of words. "I think that was just a tangent within a tangent. I'm sorry."

"I don't mind," Clarke said, and Lexa realized then just how intently the other girl was listening. Like what she said was important. Like it matter. Like _she_ mattered. "Go on."

Lexa swallowed, trying to remember what she'd been trying to say. "It just seems as if those labels can feel a little bit childish. Like how can they really encompass the scope of a relationship, when it goes beyond hanging out – or making out – for a few weeks?"

"Exactly," Clarke replied, her eyes bright like a spark had been lit somewhere in her. "And lover will immediately send people thinking in a particular direction, and there's no way in _hell_ I will ever say the words 'my mother's lover' to describe him, because..." She shuddered. 

"Except you just did," Lexa pointed out.

"Yes, I did." Clarke shuddered again, this time Lexa was pretty sure for dramatic effect, and she suppressed a smile. "Then you get things that sound one, old-fashioned, and two, ridiculous, like gentleman-friend and lady-friend." She rolled her eyes. "I don't think anyone could ever actually use those with any kind of seriousness. There's partner, I guess, but that leaves a lot of ambiguity about the relationship. I guess I could always call him her baby-daddy, but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't appreciate that."

Lexa's eyebrows went up. "I didn't know you had a sibling," she said.

"I don't," Clarke said. She looked away. "Not yet."

"Oh." Lexa wasn't sure how else to respond to that, especially given the expression on Clarke's face. 

"She's due in June." Clarke sighed. "It's part of the reason that I didn't want to go home over break."

Lexa thought maybe it would be better to let it go, because it was clear this wasn't something that Clarke liked talking about, but she couldn't. Her voice dropped low as she asked, "What's the rest of the reason?"

"It's just... it's messy." Clarke looked at her, then away again. "Things with me and my mom. They have been ever since my dad died. Even before my dad died, really. I always got along better with him than I did with my mother; he said it was because we were too much alike. We're both stubborn, and we know how to push each other's buttons, and... she's a doctor, and I always wanted to be a doctor, too. I don't know if it was because I wanted to be like her or because I wanted her approval or if it was because I wanted to help people, but I expect it's probably a mix of all of those things. And sometimes we got along fine... as long as I fit into the mold of what she expected me to be. At least that's how it felt. But then... she started to become someone that I didn't want to be like, if that makes sense. Things were just falling apart between her and my dad, and—" Clarke stopped. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't dump all of this on you."

"I asked," Lexa reminded her. "Please." _Go on,_ was implied. Her fingers twitched, wanting to reach out and touch Clarke. 

"Things were falling apart between her and my dad, and I don't know all of the reasons, because they were good at hiding that kind of thing from me. Because they were trying to protect me maybe, or because they didn't want me to get caught in the middle, or..." Clarke shrugged. "Whatever the reason, the night that he died, they had had a fight. A huge fight. He left to go cool off, and... he never came home. Car accident. Bad weather, someone – not my dad, the other person – going too fast, hit him and... they say he died instantly, that... but of course they're going to say that. They're going to tell you that the person didn't suffer, but how do they know? They weren't there. But he was dead before the paramedics even got to the scene. And of course the driver of the other car was completely fine. A few bumps and bruises, I think, but he walked away." 

"I'm sorry," Lexa said, touching Clarke's arm gently, not wanting to force anything but wanting her to know that she was there if she needed her, to give whatever comfort was possible while she relived a moment in her life that would almost certainly never hurt any less. 

"Can we... maybe... not do this?" Clarke asked. "I mean... not here?"

Lexa followed her gaze – back toward the hallway, and Lexa's bedroom, with a door that closed and locked, that would protect them from interruption and prying eyes. "Sure," she said, relieved that Clarke hadn't shut down completely. She led her to her room, and they settled side by side against the headboard, their backs cushioned by Lexa's pillows, and Clarke laced her fingers through Lexa's and let her head fall on her shoulder. "I blamed my mom," she said, picking up where she'd left off. "It was stupid and senseless – his death, I mean – and it was her fault. If she hadn't been... herself, if she hadn't done whatever it was she'd done, said whatever it was she said that made it so that he couldn't even stand to be in the house with her, he would still be alive. But I was stuck with her, because where else was I going to go?" 

Lexa didn't know what to say, so she opted for silence. She reached over to tuck back a strand of Clarke's hair behind her ear, letting her fingers linger along her jaw, Clarke's flushed cheeks hot under her cool fingers, and Clarke reached up with her free hand to hold it there. "It never really got better," she said. "We learned to live with each other without ever really speaking, or interacting at all, except on the most basic level. By the end... I don't think either of us was really happy with the arrangement, but we didn't know how to cross the chasm that had formed between us, you know? Griffin women burn bridges; we don't build them. But after coming to school, being away from her for a few months, I thought... maybe with that time, that space... maybe we could figure it out? So I came home for Christmas break ready to try and really just... lay it all out there, and just... start over. But it didn't work out that way." 

Lexa knew. She knew very well what it was like to live with someone who you'd forgotten, or never learned, how to talk to. But this wasn't about her. 

She waited for Clarke to continue, but she seemed to have reached... not a stopping point, but a point past which she couldn't make herself go. Her eyes were closed, and tears slid slowly down her cheeks. Lexa brushed them away with the ball of her thumb, then pulled Clarke close, wrapping her in her arms and holding her, letting her bury her face against her shoulder, the side of her neck, and in a way this felt more intimate than kissing, and her heartbeat responded accordingly, but this was not the time. 

She rubbed Clarke's back and stroked her hair, not trying to hush her or tell her it would be all right, because she needed this, needed to let it out, and Lexa got that. So she just held her until the tears passed, and handed Clarke a tissue to wipe her eyes and nose when she finally lifted her face again. "I'm sorry," Clarke said. "That..." 

"Don't be sorry, Clarke," Lexa said. "You have nothing to be sorry for."

"I might have gotten snot on your sweater."

Lexa bit her lip to keep from smiling. "You're allowed to be sorry for that."

Clarke laughed softly, and blotted Lexa's shoulder with a clean tissue. "That's what happened at Christmas," she said. "That's how I ended up with Finn. I went home, determined to try to make things right, but then _he_ was there, living in my house, basically, where I grew up with my dad, but my dad's gone and he was taking up space that doesn't belong to him. And then the whole pregnancy thing kind of... he didn't even say anything, he didn't have to, just the way he put his arms around her, I just... it was such a cliché gesture, you know? The arms around the woman from behind, hands on her belly thing? And I just... I couldn't handle it. So I left, but I had nowhere to go, really, so I went to Finn, and I wasn't exactly in the best state of mind when I ended up in bed with him, because I just didn't want to be alone and then again on New Year's after what happened to Octavia, and it just sort of spiraled from there, especially after Raven showed up. And so everything with my mom has kind of gotten tangled up with everything with Finn, and sometimes we're okay together and sometimes we're not, and I know that I should try harder, that I'm going to have to get over it because it's not going to change or go away, but... I'm the kid. Why I should I be the one who has to be mature about things?" 

Lexa couldn't tell if Clarke was being entirely serious with her last comment, but she wasn't about to laugh at her. Because again, she understood all too well what it was like to feel like you had to be an adult when it was the last thing that you wanted to do. She knew what it was like to need someone to step up and be a parent, and to have them let you down. When she'd needed her dad most, he was nowhere to be found. The only thing that had saved her was Anya, who had been there every step of the way...

She tilted her head toward Clarke's, so that they were their own little bubble that the world couldn't intrude on, and said softly, "If it would make it easier... if it would help... when you do go back... I could go with you."


	71. Clarke

Clarke blinked. "I'm sorry, but you're going to have to repeat that. _Clearly_ I'm hearing things, because I thought I just heard you offer to go home with me."

It was a joke... mostly. She knew that she'd heard Lexa right, but the fact that she was offering... But then, Lexa really didn't know _what_ she was offering, did she? It was hard to convey to someone who had only grown up with a father (and one who was emotionally distant at best, from what Lexa had said) what it was like to have a parent that you were almost constantly at odds with. 

"I did," Lexa said. "Need I remind you that you were the one who was ready to pack your bags and drag me off to meet a cartoon mouse? If we're talking about levels of insanity, I'm pretty sure you're still an order of magnitude above me in that regard."

That was also a joke... probably. Suddenly the fact that the world had seemed to contract around them made it hard to breathe, and Clarke straightened, sitting back up, gathering the tissues she'd used and tossed them in the little waste basket next to Lexa's bed. "I meant it," she said. "About Disney. We're going to go."

"I meant it too," Lexa said. 

"Is Daniel your middle name or something?" Clarke asked. 

"No," Lexa said, frowning.

Which of course begged the question, "What _is_ your middle name?"

"Chandler," Lexa said. "It's my mother's maiden name."

"Mine's Marie," Clarke said. "After Marie Curie."

Lexa nodded, and then neither of them seemed to know what to say. Or maybe Lexa was waiting for her to say something, and Clarke just had no idea what it was. She couldn't possibly be waiting for Clarke to actually say yes to her offer, could she? Because there was no way that Clarke was going to let her mother anywhere near Lexa any time soon. What if she'd taken what Clarke had said about she and her mother being too much alike to heart, and after she met her mother the idea of Clarke becoming that person scared her off?

Lexa was made of sterner stuff than that, though. "You would really walk into the lion's den?" Clarke asked. 

"To draw the thorn from your paw?" Lexa asked. "Absolutely." She smiled. "Except that's a different story entirely, isn't it? Aesop, not the Bible. And possibly not even Aesop. But yes, I would. As I keep reminding you, I don't say things I don't mean. I don't make offers I'm not willing to have accepted."

"It might end up being a mistake you don't want to make twice," Clarke said. 

"It might," Lexa agreed. And then all of the levity was gone from her voice, and it was cold with anger and dripped with sarcasm. "After all, we already know how popular I am with parents." 

It took a second for Clarke to realize she was talking about Costia's mother, and the altercation she'd witnessed between them... and however many months of shit she'd to put up with from her before that. "My mother's not like that," she said. "It wouldn't matter to her. She just..." She sighed softly, realizing even as she said them that the words were true: "She just wants me to be happy."

_She just wants me to be happy, and she wants a chance to be happy herself. And no one is pushing me out of that equation but me._ And didn't her mother deserve a second chance at happiness? She'd been happy with Clarke's father for a long time, and then things had just fallen apart. And what she'd told Lexa was true; she didn't really know what had gone wrong between them, because they'd been careful to keep it from her. She wasn't honestly sure that she wanted to know now, but maybe knowing wasn't the answer. She could forgive her mother without knowing exactly what she was forgiving her for, couldn't she?

"That's what Costia's parents wanted too," Lexa said. "They just had their own ideas about what form that should take."

Clarke took her hand and squeezed it. "Maybe my mom does, too, about some things, but I promise, the fact that you're a girl won't be an issue." And she genuinely believed it; of all the things that Abby Griffin might decide to object to in a potential – and here they were again with the lack of good words – quote-unquote _significant other_ , gender would fall really far down the list, if it appeared at all. 

"The fact that you offered at all," Clarke said, "would win you a lot of points."

"It's not a game I'm trying to win," Lexa said. 

"I didn't think it was," Clarke said. "The fact that your immediate predecessor was an actual stalker with anger management issues also works in your favor." She was trying, and failing, by the scowl forming between Lexa's eyebrows, to lighten the mood. She didn't know if it would help to mention that the fact that Lexa had helped her get away from Finn, both by actively removing her from situations that she couldn't quite escape on her own, and just by being there, being a port in the storm, would also carry a lot of weight with her mom, so she didn't. The last thing she wanted to do was upset Lexa more, even though it looked like maybe it was too late.

"What about your dad?" she asked finally. "Is he... does he care?"

"I assume you mean about me being gay," Lexa said, "and not in general. Although I suppose the answer is the same either way – Don't Ask, Don't Tell was very much still alive and going strong in my house."

Clarke blinked. "So he doesn't _know_? You were with Costia—"

"For over a year," Lexa finished for her. "But think about it this way: when did you come out to your parents as straight?"

"I di—" Clarke stopped, lifted their joined hands, and raised an eyebrow. 

"Sorry," Lexa said. "Habit. But you get my point? Why should I have to make some big announcement when other people don't have to? Anyway, I'm sure he knows at this point. I'm sure that he had to have figured it out, or maybe Anya explained it to him. But if he knows, it's not because I ever told him, and even if he suspected he never asked. We weren't exactly big on talking about our feelings."

"When Costia died, though..." Clarke wasn't even sure where she was going with the sentence, what possible end there could be to it. Whatever issues they had, her mother had stepped up as soon as she found out how things were for Clarke with Finn. And if she had ever loved someone as much as Lexa had loved (still loved, maybe, but at a certain point you had to start to use the past tense) Costia, and lost them, her mother would be there to support her, to take care of her and help her through it. How could Lexa's father have just ignored it? How could he look at his daughter and see the pain she was in and not _do_ anything?

"When Costia died, I called Anya," Lexa said. "I..." Clarke watched her throat work as she swallowed, and she suddenly seemed fascinated by their interwoven fingers. "I didn't believe them. I called Anya and I asked her to go... to see Costia and tell me that she was okay. Obviously that didn't work out. And when I was told that if I tried to show up at the funeral, they would call the police, I had her go for me. Or she decided to go for me." She rubbed at her forehead with her free hand. "She flew out after to see how I was, and I made her leave. I didn't want her there, _caring_. I wasn't... I didn't feel worth caring about."

Clarke's heart ached as she watched Lexa slip back to that place so easily, and she hated that she'd made her go there. "Lexa—"

Lexa shook her head, dismissing her objection, or her apology, or whatever she thought Clarke was trying to say. "A few days later she drove out to where I was living, because of course my father had been moved again while I was at school so we were in the middle of nowhere, and she just... stayed. For the rest of the summer, pretty much. She looked after me, made sure I ate, slept, all of that. Figured out the semester abroad thing when I said I wouldn't come back here, and he said that I wasn't allowed to not go to school. She was the go-between, the mediator. She was the one who could talk to him without screaming. Not that I screamed at him. I didn't say anything at all until I forced to, because I knew that if I did, I might start screaming, and I might never stop. Which sounds melodramatic now, but it's honestly how it felt at the time."

Clarke remembered that feeling. She'd remembered how it had felt to bottle it all up and hold it all in. She suspected that Lexa had been better at it than she had, though. 

She realized then that there was something she'd never asked, and that Lexa had never told her, and she couldn't help wondering if it played some role in the distance between Lexa and her father. But to just bring it up out of... not nowhere, exactly, and they were already so deep into this conversation that it didn't seem possible to actually make things worse. "Can I ask you something?"

Lexa looked at her, wide green eyes fixed on hers, and Clarke regretted opening her mouth because it was clear in her gaze that she was already exposing more of herself than maybe she ever had to anyone since Costia, and being that open and vulnerable came with a cost. "You can always ask," she said. "I don't promise that I will always answer." 

There was no going back now, because if she tried to say that she'd changed her mind, Lexa wouldn't let her get away with it. But she cringed inwardly even as the words left her lips. "How did you mother die?" 

"Cancer," Lexa said. "It was quick. She went from being perfectly fine – or at least _seeming_ perfectly fine, asymptomatic, so that she had no reason to go to the doctor – to dead in something like three months. Four, maybe. I don't really remember her being sick for long. I didn't have to watch her waste away for months, years, like some people do, and I'm grateful for that. But at the same time, when you're young, you don't really understand how your mom can be totally okay one day and the next she can't get out of the bed and a week later you're putting her in the ground. Except not, because she was cremated." She sighed. "Can we talk about something _other_ than death, please?"

Clarke nodded, smiling a little, trying to make this okay. "Of course." She looked around the room, as if it would give him some clue as to what the right next thing to say would be. Her eyes landed on the photograph on the wall. "Did you take that?"

"Yes. I must have sent it to Anya at some point, because she had it printed and framed."

"How did you get interested in photography?" 

"When I was in eighth grade, in our tech ed class we did a unit on photography. We got to use black and white film cameras, and a few of us that actually got our other work done in a timely fashion got to use the dark room. I fell in love with it then, because it was a way for me to keep hold of places and things that I liked that I might never see again."

"Places and things – not people?"

"People too," Lexa said. "Not in a while, though. I took a lot of pictures of Costia, and after... I didn't."

"Why not?"

"I don't know," Lexa said. "I honestly didn't notice I had stopped until I was going back through my pictures from Australia."

"Do you think you'll start again?"

Lexa looked at her, and Clarke could see the beginnings of a smile curving her lips. "Maybe," she said. "If I had the right subject."


	72. Lexa

"Who would the right subject be?" Clarke asked, and Lexa couldn't tell if she was being genuine or coy. Coy didn't really seem like her style, but it seemed impossible that she didn't know that Lexa was referring to her. _Obviously_ she was referring to her. 

Lexa just picked up her phone and snapped a picture of Clarke in response. It wasn't even a particularly good one; she hadn't paid more than a second's attention to framing it, or waited for just the right moment. But now she had a picture of Clarke on her phone, and of all the things that could have made her feel, the biggest one was relief. She decided now wasn't really the time to sort out why that might be; she could have plenty of time to obsess over it later, after Clarke left. 

_If_ Clarke left. Obviously she would have to leave eventually, but... it didn't have to be soon. Clarke had said that her plan for the day had been to spend it with her, after all. And maybe today would turn into tonight.

A flash of guilt at that thought, and it must have registered somewhere in her face (and either she was getting worse at hiding things, or Clarke was getting better at reading her, or both) because Clarke reached out, touched her knee. "Okay?"

"Fine," Lexa said. She didn't want to explain that just because she had finally gotten to a point where she was ready – she thought she was ready – to start to move on, to start something new, it didn't mean that everything from her past just faded away. Because even if she'd managed to say her sorrys and goodbyes to Costia, it didn't mean she _really_ knew how she would feel about this. 

But she wanted to believe that Costia would want her to be happy, and she wanted to believe that if Costia was here, and they had just broken up, decided to be friends instead (which was hard to imagine, but it wasn't outside of the realm of possibility, because people did grow up and change and grow apart, and Anya had kept trying to tell her that, but she hadn't wanted to listen), that Costia would like Clarke. That she would approve.

"My father hated that word," Clarke said. "'Fine.' He said it was a non-answer. The only word I think he hated more was 'whatever'." 

"It is," Lexa said. "A non-answer. I just don't—" She stopped, sighed. "I meant it when I said that I wanted to talk about something other than death. Which means trying not to think about Costia, and that's hard. Still. It might be hard for a long time."

"I know," Clarke said, squeezing her knee, her voice soft and her eyes sympathetic. "And the harder you try not to think about something, the more you think about it."

"So what do you do?" Lexa asked. "How do you work past it?" Clarke had lost her father longer ago than she'd lost Costia, after all, so maybe she had some kind of insight. 

"You don't, exactly," Clarke said. "You work through it. And when it hurts, you let it hurt, and eventually the hurt starts to fade. You start to remember more of the good than the bad. You start to be able to think about them without it bringing tears to your eyes. You start to be able to have memories without them consuming you." She shrugged, looked down and then back up. "It takes time, and sometimes it will all come up like it was just yesterday, and those are bad days, and some days you'll suddenly realize that you've gone all day without thinking about them, and even when you realize that, it isn't accompanied by guilt, just acknowledgment, and those are good days."

"You may have missed your calling," Lexa said, smiling crookedly. "You would make an excellent high school guidance counselor."

Clarke looked at her, absolutely straight-faced, and said. "And here trying for Yoda I was."

Lexa snorted. "Sorry, young padawan. Leave the nerding to Anya."

"I think there's room in your life for more than one nerd," Clarke said with a smirk. Then, more seriously, "There's room in your life for more than one person. I think... that was the hardest thing to learn, and the most important. That it's okay to let people in, that opening yourself up, even though it increases the chances that you could be hurt by losing someone, also increases your chances that if you do get hurt, there will be someone to help pick up the pieces."

"You're here, aren't you?" Lexa asked. Clarke knew that that meant something, didn't she? Couldn't she see that she was trying, that this was progress? 

"Last I checked. You can pinch me, if you want, to make sure."

"I have a better idea," Lexa said, and tugged her in close so she could kiss her, and it felt a little bit like drowning and a little bit like flying, and she tried not to let herself compare it to what it had been like with Costia, because it wasn't anything like it. The mechanics were the same, obviously, but the feeling... 

With Costia, at least at first, it had always felt like a dare, a challenge to be met, with a hint of a 'fuck you' thrown in, mostly on Costia's side. With Clarke... Clarke felt like coming home. Which was something that Lexa didn't even really have a concept of, but it was all the little things that she imagined might be that feeling – your own bed after being away, a warm bath on a cold day, your favorite hoodie... and Clarke was wearing hers, and she finally had to break the kiss because a lump formed in her throat, but at the same time she was smiling, and that was Clarke, too, and the place she occupied in Lexa's life, and in her heart. She rested her forehead against Clarke's shoulder, and felt her fingers in her hair.

_Thank you,_ she wanted to say, and _I love you,_ but they weren't there yet, or she wasn't (except she was, or she wouldn't be thinking it, would she? but thinking it, feeling it, was different from _saying_ it), or she wasn't sure that Clarke was, despite what she'd said earlier. 

It was Clarke who finally broke the silence, her lips brushing Lexa's temple, her breath tickling her ear. "What's your favorite color?"

Lexa looked up. "Blue," she said, which was true but even if it hadn't been, she might have said it anyway as she got caught in Clarke's eyes. 

"Not green? Or gray?" Clarke asked. 

"Anya decorated my room," Lexa said. "Before I got here. I didn't actually know where I was going to be living when I got back from Australia. I assumed I would be going back to the dorms. I didn't want to. I didn't want to come back at all. But I think she wanted to be fairly neutral. I do like green. But blue is my favorite."

"I like blue, too," Clarke said. 

"I've noticed." She'd noticed that Clarke wore the color a lot, and she'd noticed how it brought out the color of her eyes, and she'd noticed plenty of other things about her clothing and how it fit her, and what it hinted at and what it hid. Even when she'd tried not to think about it, she noticed. "What's yours?"

Clarke considered. "I don't think I have one," she said. "Or it changes, depending on my mood and the situation. I'm pretty partial to green at the moment. Red is another good one." Her eyes flicked from Lexa's sweater to her eyes, and then to her own hoodie, and maybe she was acknowledging that it was actually Lexa's, not that she had any intention of reclaiming it now (and if she was being absolutely honest she hoped that Clarke didn't ever offer to return it, either). 

"I guess as an artist, you learn to appreciate color more," Lexa said.

"I don't actually work in color much," Clarke said. "Mostly grayscale, or sepia tones. Charcoal and chalk, graphite..." She shrugged. "At least lately. I did more work with color when I was in school, and I had access to the art rooms. Now it's just quick sketches, mostly."

"Why?" Lexa asked. 

"No time," Clarke said. "Or not taking the time. Also lack of space."

Lexa nodded. It had been a long time since she'd done any real film photography because she had nowhere to develop the prints, and she wasn't about to just turn over her film to any local drugstore. There were camera places that could send it out for developing, but that didn't give her control over the outcome, so she never bothered. "Have you thought about taking art classes here?"

"I don't know if they really open them up to people are aren't majoring in art," Clarke said. "There might be one or two beginner level classes, general study type things, but that wouldn't be what I was looking for. I mostly just want space and access to supplies and the freedom to do what I want from there."

"There might be somewhere like that," Lexa said. "Some kind of space you can rent or something."

"I've never really looked," Clarke said. "I wanted to stay focused on my studies, and settling in to college life, but maybe that's just an excuse."

"Maybe it is," Lexa said. "It's not a bad one." She considered Clarke for a moment, reached over to tuck a lock of hair back behind her ear. "Maybe... if you're around this summer... we could find somewhere. For you to draw, or paint, or whatever you wanted to do. And I could find somewhere with a dark room I can use."

"I haven't even thought about the summer," Clarke admitted. "It seems so far away, but I guess it's really not." She frowned slightly. "I don't know if I want to go home and live with a newborn."

"I can't say that I blame you," Lexa said. 

She wanted to say, 'Stay here. Stay with me,' but there wasn't anywhere here for Clarke to stay. There wasn't an extra room for her, and even if they were together at that point – still together? they were together now, weren't they? that's what had this morning had meant? – she wasn't sure either of them would be ready to be sharing space full time without having their own rooms, at least, to retreat to. And Anya might not be on board, and for all that she said this was their place, their home, in the end it was really Anya who had made the arrangement with her friend, and so she got the final say. And anyway, she was jumping the gun, putting the cart before the horse, and probably several other clichés that all meant that she needed to take a deep breath and a step back. That she needed to be realistic about what this was, and what it might become. "There's still time to figure it out." 

"There is," Clarke agreed. "We really aren't very good at talking about things that aren't heavy, are we?" she asked, with a laugh that was maybe only a little bit forced. Lexa couldn't disagree with her. "Okay, here's something not serious at all – what's your favorite flavor of ice cream?"

"Not serious?" Lexa teased. "Not _serious_? _Clearly_ you've never been to an ice cream place with me, and watched me agonize over the decision."

Clarke smiled. " _Clearly_ we'll need to fix that. Stat."

"Is that doctor-speak for right now?"

"Yes," Clarke said, "but I guess I don't really mean it. It can wait until at least after lunch." 

"So there's going to be lunch?" Lexa asked.

"And dinner, if you play your cards right." Clarke grinned, and Lexa realized then that she'd said something very similar to Clarke once, way back when they'd first been getting to know each other. 

So she gave Clarke the same answer she'd been given, "I've always been good at cards."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for posting so late! My schedule is weird this week and I honestly forgot it was Wednesday until after TKD.


	73. Clarke

Clarke's quickly swirled her brush in a cup of murky water as her phone began to sing at her, grabbing it and answering as she blotted against a paper towel to make sure all of the color was out. "Hey, you," she said, because she'd set a special ringtone for Lexa just so she would know when it was her and not anyone she might not want to talk to. Like her mom, except she hadn't actually called, and for some reason that upset Clarke, but not enough to make her pick up the phone and dial it herself.

"Hey." There was a pause on the other end, and Clarke thought she could just hear the sound of Anya's voice in the background. "Anya wants to know if you're coming over today."

" _Anya_ wants to know?" Clarke teased. 

"Yes," Lexa said. "She feels like cooking, and she wanted me to tell you that you are welcome to invite Octavia and your other friend that you're staying with—"

"Raven," Clarke filled in, even though she wasn't sure Lexa was actually leaving a blank.

"Raven," Lexa repeated, like she was committing it to memory, and Clarke imagined her nodding, confirming that she'd gotten it, or maybe annoyed that she'd forgotten in the first place. Anya knew Raven's name, after all, and probably had said it when she originally conveyed the message to Lexa. "She said that you're welcome to invite them over for dinner."

"That's nice of her," Clarke said. "Let me ask them."

"Of course." 

Clarke got up, took the few steps from where she'd been working at the kitchen table into the living room, where Raven was drafting (as usual, because apparently this was something that she had to do a lot of, and she wanted to get as far ahead as possible so she wasn't scrambling like everyone else at the end of the semester) and Octavia was dividing her time between reading and texting Lincoln. "Do we have any plans for tonight?" she asked.

"You're looking at them," Raven said. "Why?"

"Lexa – and Anya – are inviting us over for dinner."

"Oh, so you're finally going to let me meet the girl that's got you all starry-eyed?" Raven asked. Clarke knew that she was teasing, but for some reason it felt... off, somehow. She hadn't been keeping Lexa away from her friends, or vice versa. They'd only been together for a few _days_. 

"You've already met her," Clarke pointed out.

"But never really to talk to," Raven said. "How am I supposed to know if she's good enough for you if I don't get the chance to talk to her?" 

"You get to decide who's good enough for me?" Clarke asked, her eyebrows going up. She knew that Raven was joking, but it still rubbed her the wrong way. 

"Well your track record since I've known you hasn't been all that great," Raven pointed out. 

"... are you talking about Finn?" Clarke asked, seriously starting to get annoyed now. "Because if that makes me a bad judge of character, then maybe—"

It was probably a good thing that Octavia interrupted.

"Tell her yes," Octavia said. "Free food. Free _good_ food. And Lincoln is busy with his buddies tonight. Poker or something, and he refuses to invite me. He says that he's afraid that I would beat them and damage all of their fragile egos." She grinned. 

Clarke smiled back, a little forced but trying to shake off her irritation. "Thanks, O," she said. She put the phone back to her ear, wondering how much of the conversation Lexa had heard. She should have muted the phone. She hoped that somehow Lexa had missed all of it. "Yes, we'll come. What time?"

"Whenever you want," Lexa said, "but Anya says we'll probably eat around six."

"Okay. We'll be over..." Clarke glanced at the clock, surprised to see that it was already after four. Where had the day gone? "We'll be over in a little while."

"I'll see you then," Lexa said, then more softly, "Thank you."

"For what?" Clarke asked.

"Just... for being you," Lexa said, and Clarke knew that it was impossible to _hear_ someone blush, but it didn't make her any less sure of the flush that was rising in Lexa's cheeks. 

"Likewise," Clarke said, and meant it. "See you soon." They hung up. 

"So what time?" Octavia asked. 

"Whenever," Clarke told her, "but no later than six."

"Okay," Octavia said. "I'm going to shower, then." She was still in her pajamas; it had been one of those days. She sent one last text, then dumped her phone and book on the coffee table and disappeared into the bathroom. 

Raven glanced at the clock. "Is it all right if I finish this first?" she asked. "It shouldn't take long."

"Of course," Clarke said. "There's no hurry."

Raven looked up at her and smirked. "Uh-huh."

"What's what supposed to mean?" Clarke asked, her hackles going up again. Was Raven _trying_ to push her buttons, and if so, why? Had she done something to piss her off without knowing it?

"I remember what it was like," Raven said. "Obviously it was different with us, since I had known him all my life, but when it got to the point where we were more than friends, I know how much I hated to be away from him, and how any time I had any opportunity to see him, I didn't want to wait even a minute."

"It’s not like that," Clarke said, trying not to sound defensive and probably failing. "We can be apart."

"Of course you can be," Raven said, her attention going back to her drawing. "You don't stop being separate people just because you're together, or at least you shouldn't. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't rather be with her every time you're given the chance."

"It's still really new," Clarke said, not sure whether she was trying to defend herself, or Lexa, or them together, or if she was just trying to explain, or what. Not that she owed Raven, or anyone, an explanation. "She's still... fragile, I guess. Shaky. We both are."

Raven looked up again, studying her. "Is that how you feel when you're with her, or only when you think about it when you're apart?"

"Sometimes both," Clarke said, "but mostly the latter. Most of the time when we're together, I actually feel... normal. For the first time in a long time."

Raven smiled. "Good for you," she said, but Clarke thought maybe there was some hesitation in it. Like she wasn't sure whether she wanted to be happy for Clarke or not. But probably she was just imagining things. The world wasn't actually out to get her. "Let me just finish this up. We'll see who's faster – me at drawing or Octavia in the shower."

"Definitely you drawing," Clarke said. "O takes the longest showers ever."

She went to clean up the mess she'd made on the table, of paper and cups of water and a palette to mix her colors. She'd decided watercolor was safe enough; she wasn't likely to leave any permanent stains even if the paint got somewhere that it wasn't meant to be, and it was nice to actually do some work in color for a change. Her technique wasn't what it had once been – it was amazing how quickly a skill slipped away if you weren't using it – but she would get it back. The idea of being able to capture Lexa on paper was inspiration enough to make her want to try.

She decided to change, even though she knew it didn't matter what she wore. It wasn't like this was going to be any kind of formal dinner; there wasn't even a table in the Lexa and Anya's place big enough for all of them to comfortably sit down at. But she wanted to look nice, or at least presentable, so she found a pair of clean black jeans and a nice shirt and slipped into them, twisting back her hair to keep it out of her eyes, and was glad for whatever impulse had made her decide to pack her diamond studs rather than leaving them in her dorm room over break, to add a little sparkle to it all.

She drove, because she was the one who knew where they were going. Raven offered to follow her in her own car, so that she wouldn't be obligated to bring them home again, but Clarke told her it was fine, and parking at the condo was limited so it was better if they only took one car. She didn't say that she and Lexa weren't at the sleepover stage yet, in part because it really wasn't any of their business and might be TMI, but also because it wasn't completely true. They'd spent nights together before, but on the couch and (almost) completely platonically. Clarke wasn't even sure which of them at this point was hesitating, but it had only been a few days, it was still new, and that would be a big step, even if nothing came of it except spending the night in the same bed. 

She parked next to Anya's car, and they trooped to the front door and rang the bell. The door buzzed to let them in, and they made their way up the stairs. Clarke steadied Raven as she pried off her boots, then knocked.

A wave of good smells wafted out as soon as Lexa opened the door, and Clarke's stomach growled. It occurred to her then that she had been so wrapped up in her art she had forgotten to eat lunch. "Come in," Lexa said, not exactly stiff, but formal, standing aside to let them in. 

Clarke went last, and caught her hand after she closed the door, giving it a quick squeeze. She knew that being social wasn't exactly Lexa's favorite thing, although she handled it all right in small groups and small doses. She was rewarded with a smile, and for a second she thought Lexa might hug her, or even kiss her, but then the moment passed. Clarke wasn't sure what Lexa's feelings about PDA in general were, so she made the decision not to read too much – or anything – into it. 

"What's cooking, good looking?" Raven asked, heading straight for the kitchen and propping herself on one of the stools.

"If you think that's going to get you a better grade," Anya said, "think again."

Raven laughed. "It was worth a shot," she said. "But that doesn't answer the question."

"We've got pasta with chicken, asparagus, and caramelized onions, to be served with aged balsamic vinegar and a sprinkling of parmesan cheese, accompanied by salad and garlic bread." Anya turned to look at her, chin up so she could look down her nose like some sort of snobby waiter. "Is that to your satisfaction?"

"That sounds – and smells – awesome," Raven said, grinning. "Thank you for inviting us."

"You're welcome," Anya said, dropping the act and smiling back. "I hate making partial boxes of pasta, and without help, we would be eating leftovers for days."

"Which isn't necessarily a bad thing," Lexa said. 

"No," Anya agreed, "although it works better when we've got classes and can bring the leftovers for lunch."

" _You_ can," Lexa replied. "You have access to a microwave to heat things up."

"You know you can always come find me," Anya said. "As long as I'm not in class, I'll hook you up."

Lexa shrugged and apparently decided to let the subject go. She looked at Clarke. "So what have you been up to?" she asked, with feigned nonchalance. If Clarke didn't know better, she would think that Lexa was actually nervous. 

"I went to the art store and got some watercolors," she said. "I kept thinking about our conversation the other day, and I decided that it was time."

Lexa smiled, and _damn_ the things that that did to Clarke's heart. There was something about it... about how it made her look younger, less battle-worn... that made Clarke want to do whatever it took to not have it fade away, which it always did, all too quickly. "I'm glad," she said. "Will you show me?"

"When it's done, maybe," Clarke said. "If it's any good."

"Only if it's good?"

"You don't show me all of your pictures that didn't come out right," Clarke said.

"Because they all always do," Lexa said, and now her smile was wider, almost a grin, and Clarke rolled her eyes, but slid her arm around her waist to pull her closer, so they were hip-to-hip, and Lexa didn't pull away or object, so she figured it was all right. "And if they're not, I say they are, and then if people express doubt, I accuse them of not understanding my 'artistic vision'."

Clarke laughed. "Right," she said. "I'll have to keep that phrase in mind."

"It's very handy," Lexa said, trying to look solemn but the spark in her eyes betrayed her. "When in doubt, blame the philistine."


	74. Lexa

Lexa hadn't been entirely thrilled when Anya had suggested that they invite Clarke's friends, as well as Clarke, to dinner, but it wasn't as bad as she feared. She knew Octavia already from the dojang, and Raven was nice enough... and nice in a snarky, dry sense of humor way, not in a bouncy bubbly way, which helped. 

When dinner was ready, Lexa helped Anya get it onto plates, and took a plate to Raven where she was sitting on the couch, having relocated from the breakfast bar when it became clear that Anya wasn't going to give her a sneak preview of the meal.

"I could have gotten it," she said. "I'm not—"

"I know," Lexa said, cutting her off because she didn't want it to turn into a bigger thing than it actually was. "You're a guest. If it had been Clarke or Octavia already sitting down, I would have done the same thing."

Raven narrowed her eyes like she wasn't sure that she could trust her, but finally just said, "Thank you."

"You're welcome." She sat at the other end of the couch, and Clarke took the spot between them. They all settled in to eat, which effectively put an end to any attempt at conversation for a little while, beyond the sounds of chewing and compliments for the cook. 

"If the whole academic career thing doesn't work out, you could always become a chef," Octavia told Anya. 

"What do you do with a degree in military history, anyway?" Raven asked. "I mean, it's not as useless as a degree in, say, literature or something, but it doesn't seem like it has much practical application."

"I'm still figuring that out," Anya said. "Does everything have to have a practical application?"

"If you want to make money, yeah," Raven said. "Maybe in the past it was okay to get a degree just to get a degree, just for the hell of it, but... now that just seems crazy. Unless you're rich, and it doesn't matter if you'll be able to make enough to pay your student loans after you graduate. Or you don't have student loans in the first place. But I grew up broke, and I have absolutely no intention of going back to that kind of life, so I'm getting a job that pays, thanks."

"The American education system in general is a mess, from kindergarten on up," Anya agreed. "Its system of higher education possibly the most messed up of all. In other countries university is free, or nearly free."

"And education is actually about learning, and not just taking tests," Lexa chimed in. "Again, not everywhere, but in a lot of places. But then in some other countries they also decide when kids are around twelve years old whether they're going to go on to a school that will give them the opportunity to go on to be a doctor or lawyer, or whether they'll only be educated toward being something like an auto mechanic."

"Not to shit on auto mechanics," Octavia said. "The way cars are now, you practically need a degree in computer science."

"There's that," Lexa acknowledged. "I was just thinking that other countries are by no means perfect, either, when it comes to how they decide the future of their children. To decide when they're barely more than a child the direction of the rest of their life... how do you know that you've gotten it right? It seems very... limiting."

"Even having people decide when they're seventeen, eighteen years old what they want to do for the rest of their life is daunting," Octavia said. "Sure, there are some people who know from the time they're really young what they want to do – like Clarke being a doctor. Or they show an affinity for it, and they become passionate about it, like Raven and her machines. But there's plenty of people who have no clue. I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. I'm here at school, and it's costing an arm and a leg, and it's okay for now, while I can just get my gen eds out of the way and have them applied to whatever, but I need to figure it out soon, and it's like I'm waiting for a bolt of lightning to come down from the sky and hit me and give me all the answers."

"If a bolt of lightning hit you," Raven said, "the answer would be that you're dead."

Octavia rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."

Raven grinned. 

"I thought I knew," Lexa said. "Now I'm not sure."

Anya looked at her sharply. "What do you mean? Are you thinking about changing your major?"

Had she not mentioned it before? She thought they'd talked about it, but... But maybe she hadn't. Maybe she'd only talked about it to Clarke, and her mind had just inserted Anya in to the circle of those in the know all by itself, since most of the significant conversations she'd had about the future had been with her... focusing primarily on the fact that Lexa had one, and had to deal with that fact, of course.

"I might," Lexa said. "I don't know."

"What is it now?" Raven asked.

"International Relations," Lexa replied.

"What would you change to?"

"Law. Maybe. Probably." She had been thinking about it all semester, but she still wasn't sure. 

"Why the change?" 

Lexa sighed, and something must have shown on her face, or Clarke just knew her better already than she imaged, because she felt Clarke's hand on her knee, warm and reassuring. "Costia," she said. "When she d—when she was killed, the police ruled it accidental, essentially. Wrong place, wrong time. Which, I mean... I guess it was. Just a drunk driver going too fast through a populated area. Just an oblivious girl with her music too loud in her headphones." She took a breath and it rasped in her throat. "And of course he was military, so the police never even really _tried_."

"Wait," Anya said. "He was military?"

"Yeah."

"Then your—"

" _Yeah._ "

"Damn." Anya shook her head, and maybe now she understood why Lexa had been so angry last summer, why she'd done everything she could to avoid her father. 

"Anyway, he probably would have gotten charged with manslaughter or something, but no one cared. No one did anything. Because he was who he was, and she was who she was – a brown girl headed straight for a gay bar – and so no one cared. Even her parents..." She pursed her lips, swallowed hard, blinking back the tears. "Even her parents didn't want to pursue it. Maybe they wanted him to be caught, but not enough to actually... they didn't want people to know where—" The tears spilled, and she brushed them away quickly. "Shit. Never mind."

"I'm sorry," Raven said. "I didn't mean to make you drag up bad memories."

Lexa waved the sentiment away, trying to say that it was all right, but she couldn't manage to say anything at all. She got up and would have locked herself in the bathroom, or her room, or somewhere, but Clarke got up right after her, and caught her in the hall. 

"Hey," she said softly. "It's okay."

"It's not okay," Lexa said, pissed off, but not at Clarke or even Raven. She was pissed off at herself for not being able to get her own emotions under control, for not being able to make it through even one social occasion without falling apart. Anya had found the chinks in her armor, the cracks in her walls, and Clarke had just toppled them entirely. It left her exposed, vulnerable, and she hated it.

Clarke sighed, and pushed open Lexa's door, pulling her inside and closing it behind them. "We've all got shit," she said. "We've all got things that we don't want to think about, don't want to talk about. Raven... she's got her leg, and... you know that she was Finn's girlfriend, right? And he hooked up with me without ever officially breaking up with her. It's..." She frowned. "It's not the same thing. I know it's not. My point is that no one in that room thinks you're weak because you have emotions."

"I do," Lexa said. " _I_ think I'm weak."

"You're not," Clarke insisted. "You could have let it break you, but you didn't. That's not weakness. You want to find a way to make things better, if not for her, then for people like her. Right? That's why you're considering law?"

Lexa nodded. "But that only makes a difference if they're actually caught and charged," she said. "So maybe it's pointless."

"It wouldn't be pointless," Clarke said. "Maybe it wouldn't accomplish what you want as quickly as you hope, but it wouldn't be pointless."

Lexa nodded. She wasn't convinced, not entirely, and she wasn't sure that it was the right move. She had to decide soon, though, if she was going to change her major. Because it might mean summer classes to make up for things she'd missed, core classes that she'd taken that focused on her original major, and certainly it would make a difference in the classes that she chose for the following semester. 

Clarke took her face between her hands, looking her in the eyes and not letting her look away. "Whatever you decide, you're going to be amazing, Lexa," she said. "You already are."

"Thank you," Lexa said. She slid her arms around Clarke and hugged her, burying her face against Clarke's neck and breathing her in, taking comfort in the increasing familiarity of the smell of her, and the way that their bodies fit together. There was still a twinge of guilt, and she didn't know if that would ever go away, but she hoped maybe, some day, with time, it would. 

She finally let Clarke go, and reached for the door knob, but Clarke caught her hand, stopping her. "Wait," she said. Lexa looked back at her, and was surprised (but not very surprised) when she was met with the soft touch of Clarke's lips against her own. And all she wanted then was to give in to it, to just let herself surrender, let herself be carried away... but there were people here who would be expecting them to emerge from the room sooner rather than later, and if they didn't, they would draw their own conclusions, and Lexa wasn't in the mood for knowing smirks.

Clarke smiled as the kiss broke. "There," she said, touching Lexa's lips, which had curved into the faintest of smiles. "That's better."

"Who knew that kissing it and making it better still worked on adults?" Lexa asked.

"I did," Clarke replied. "I'm a doctor, after all. Or I will be in a few years."

Lexa smiled more fully, feeling a sense of calm sliding over her, like the feeling of warm water on chilled skin after a winter run. "Thank you, Dr. Griffin," she said. 

"No thanks necessary," Clarke said. "All in a day's work."

Lexa rolled her eyes and opened the door, returning to the living room and the awkward silence she'd left in her wake. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's still... difficult, sometimes."

"Sometimes is better than all the time," Anya observed. "Do you want to help me get dessert?"

"There's dessert?" Raven asked.

"Do we get to light it on fire again?" Octavia chimed in.

"Yes," Anya said, pointing to Raven, "and no," to Octavia. "I don't think you're supposed to flambé tiramisu."

Octavia pouted. "You're no fun."

"You're the kind of cook who thinks dinner is ready when the smoke detector goes off, aren't you?" Anya teased. 

"I'm the kind of cook that specializes in microwaves and macaroni and cheese from a box," Octavia said. "If it takes more than 10 minutes, I'm out."

"You poor thing," Anya said, half-genuine, half-sarcastic.

"Hey, you're welcome to feed me any time," Octavia said, grinning. 

Anya rolled her eyes, and turned her attention to getting the first piece of tiramisu out of the tray. It ended up in a heap on the plate. "That went well," she grumbled.

"I'll take that one," Lexa said. "I don't mind."

"I'll take it," Anya said. "You're allowed to have nice things."

Lexa was pretty sure that she wasn't just talking about cake, and decided that it was best not to try to argue.


	75. Clarke

Clarke took the plate that Lexa offered her, and waited for her to sit down before shifting just a little bit closer to her. "Yours is prettier than mine," she said, teasing. 

Lexa looked at her, and for a second Clarke wasn't sure that she understood, that she remembered, but then she smiled. "Do you want to trade?" 

Clarke shook her head, already taking a bite. She chewed and swallowed, and smiled. "This is amazing," she told Anya. "Seriously, where did you learn all of this?"

"Food Network," Anya said. "And cookbooks. And YouTube."

"No one taught you to cook?" Raven asked. "I would have thought—"

"No," Anya said. "Last semester I found myself with more free time than I expected, what with most of my friends having graduated and moved away, and Lexa being abroad – not that she knew she would be moving in here at the time – and I discovered that maybe I wasn't as comfortable with silence as I thought I was. Easy solution was to turn on the TV as background noise, but I very quickly learned that every show is basically telling the same story, one way or another, and I got sick of it really fast. Food Network wasn't actively offensive, and since I couldn't rely on the dining hall for food anymore, I figured maybe I could pick up a trick or two and not have to live on Ramen. And found out that I really enjoy it. Now you get to reap the benefits."

"Thanks again for having us," Octavia said. "It's nice to eat something that didn't come out of a cardboard box or plastic container for once."

"Who knew it was possible to get sick of takeout?" Raven said, grinning. 

"And yet you're the one who's thinking about moving off campus next year," Octavia said. "You realize you'll have to get your own food all the time then."

"I'll just have to learn how to cook," Raven said. "Maybe Anya will teach me."

Clarke felt Lexa flinch slightly, and she glanced over at her, but Lexa just shook her head, a barely perceptible motion. Clarke knew better than to try to ask her what was wrong, what had sparked the reaction, because it was unlikely she would get an answer. Maybe later, when it was just the two of them, but by then the moment would have passed, and whatever momentary discomfort she might have had would have gone with it, and it would only make things worse to bring it up again. She hoped it was only that Lexa wasn't big on having other people in her space, and she worried that if Anya was teaching Raven to cook, it would mean she was around more. 

Or maybe she had just twitched. Maybe she had an itch or something, and Clarke was reading too much into it as usual. But could anyone really blame her? It wasn't as if talking to Lexa – or even around her – wasn't like trying to navigate a field riddled with landmines, some of which you knew about, but others were buried so deep they'd been forgotten, maybe even by Lexa herself.

"Or there's always Food Network, apparently," Raven added. "I can't say that I've ever watched it before, but I'm not really much of a TV person, generally."

"All we've done all week is watch TV!" Clarke objected. 

"That's on Octavia, not me!" Raven protested. "I'm just sitting in the living room, doing my drafting, minding my own business. She's the one with the obsession with reality TV."

"It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion," Octavia said. "You know you shouldn't be watching, but you just can't look away."

"You could try not turning it on in the first place," Raven pointed out. "Putting on some music instead, or putting in a movie. Something. Anything."

Octavia frowned slightly. "If it bothers you so much, why didn't you say anything?"

"I just tuned it out," Raven said. "I have a lot of experience in that, growing up with my mom and her string of boyfriends. You learn really fast how to just not hear what you don't want to hear, and not see what you don't want to see. It's how you survive."

"I wish I'd had that choice," Octavia said, and it was as if suddenly a pall had fallen over the room. The levity of the early part of the evening was gone, and suddenly everyone was sinking down into those dark places that Clarke had mentioned to Lexa... was it only minutes before? It couldn't be more than an hour, and yet it felt like an eternity ago all of a sudden. "With my mom, it was like you were constantly on alert. When things were good, you were waiting for the other shoe to drop, waiting for the tide to turn. When things were bad, you wondered if they would ever get better, and whether you should start hiding the knives or whatever." 

Silence, because what did you say to that? There was no response that was right. Clarke knew more about the situation with Octavia's mother than any of the others did, but O still didn't talk about it much, and never this bluntly. 

"What's—" Lexa started, then stopped. 

"What's wrong with my mother?" Octavia asked, and Lexa nodded. "She's bipolar. Bipolar II, specifically. What they used to call manic-depression. When she's on her meds, she's okay, but if she goes off them... it can get ugly. Fast. And not just when she's depressed. The hypomania isn't exactly a walk in the park either, if she decides she's going to clean the whole house in the middle of the night and all you want to do is sleep but you can't because the house is so tiny you hear everything."

"Ah," Lexa said. 

"That sucks," Raven added. 

"Yup," Octavia agreed. "It does. But I had Bellamy, and he did everything he could to shelter me from it for as long as he could. And when it got to a point where he couldn't anymore, well... by then I was old enough to handle it, mostly." She shrugged. "It is what it is, you know? She was the only parent I had, and that was the way she was, and you just learn to live with it."

_You shouldn't have to,_ Clarke thought, but she didn't say it out loud. She knew better. She also knew, suddenly, how little she actually _did_ know about what life was like for other people. She had grown up with both of her parents, who loved her and who loved each other for at least most of her life. They both had stable careers and made good money, so she'd never had to worry about having a roof over her head or food on the table. She'd never worried about how she was going to pay for school; she knew that her parents had been saving since she was born, and maybe even before, and that when the time came, it would be covered. She wouldn't leave school under the kind of crushing debt that so many of her classmates would, and that was a privilege that she was only just now realizing. 

It made her feel... small. And uncomfortable. But it was the kind of discomfort, she was pretty sure, that was good for her. This was what it meant to be pushed out of your comfort zone. This was how you grew as a person. 

Something Anya had said earlier echoed back in her mind, and even though she was sure she was opening up a can of worms, she asked anyway, "What did you mean when you said that all TV shows basically tell the same story?"

Anya's eyebrows went up. "Have you been living under a rock?" she asked. 

Maybe it came out sharper than Anya intended... or maybe it didn't. "I don't watch a lot of TV," Clarke said. "I never have."

"Well then, young padawan, explain you a thing I will." 

Clarke felt Lexa shift, and when she looked over at her she had her hand over her face, the heel of it digging into one eye socket like she was trying to rub away a headache. "I didn't know it was possible for a single sentence to encapsulate everything that is wrong with a person," she groaned, and then batted away the pillow that was launched at her.

"Despite the fact that the population is fairly evenly split between men and women – I won't say 50-50 because that is number one, probably statistically inaccurate, and two, offensive to those who don't fit into the gender binary – and increasingly non-white, the vast, _vast_ majority of media centers around straight cis white men. Christian, or presumably so if it's not explicitly mentioned. Because that is apparently Default Human Being in America. Despite making up roughly half of the population, women account for – and these are rough numbers because I haven't actually studied it, but other people have and so I'm trying to remember what I've read – maybe one-third of the characters on TV. Maybe. Minorities are critically under-represented, and when they are, they are either token characters, stereotypes, or both, sometimes to the point of practically being caricatures. And they are almost _never_ the main characters in a story. They are there to prop up the Bland White Dude that the story centers around. Who is also almost always middle class, or upper middle class. There are variations on the theme, but that's basically what it boils down to. Good luck finding someone that looks like me on TV," Anya said. 

"If you find someone who looks like me, they are probably a gang member," Raven said. "Or a gang member's girlfriend, actually. Who may or may not be pregnant and-or have a young child. They will get killed to cause their boyfriend man-pain, or they will be rescued by the White Knight, or they will have to grieve their boyfriend whose life was cut tragically short, and then they will be forgotten. If people of color are underrepresented, women of color are even more so."

"It's not all shows, all of the time," Anya said, "but it's enough shows enough of the time that you just get sick of it. It's as if the media is afraid to try and tell a different story, because they think that no one will be able to handle it. No one will be able to relate. Meanwhile, outside of the media bubble, efforts to bring attention to issues faced by minorities of all kinds are hijacked because they make the Straight White Man who has been raised all of his life to believe that he is the default, that his experience is the default, uncomfortable. Suddenly Black Lives Matter becomes All Lives Matter, and they refuse to hear that they are missing the point. Yes, obviously all lives matter, but no one has ever questioned whether the lives of straight white men matter. We all know that they do, because it's shoved down our throats. And they just keep shouting, and refusing to listen, and what do you do then? Shouting back doesn't work, it just gets you painted as crazy, militaristic, a threat. It's disgusting, in and out of the realm of TV, and it needs to stop, but change is slow. Impossibly slow."

"And it's two steps forward, one step back most of the time," Raven said. "It's just... you get tired of it. And when you _do_ finally see something that's different, you feel obligated to support it even if it's not that great, just because it's better than average and how else are you going to show that there needs to be more media out there that tells a different story?"

"Or you think you're finally getting what you've always wanted this time, only to have it yanked out from under you," Lexa said softly, "and the only ending you ever see for your life is a tragic one." 

Clarke turned to look at her, and watched as the color drained for her face, and then she seemed to crumple in on herself a little. 

"For fuck's sake," she muttered. "My life has become a damned TV trope."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was written back in late February. Or I should say the first draft of this chapter, and the next one, were written in late February... and then 307 happened. And I went back and I rewrote them. Some of the ideas and content are the same from the original versions... some are not. My apologies for anyone who hates when meta enters their fiction. But these are smart, socially aware young women... and this shit needs to be said.


	76. Lexa

Lexa felt Clarke's hand on her knee, but she didn't look up. How had this never occurred to her before? She might even find it funny (funny ironic, not funny ha ha) if it wasn't so damned infuriating.

"What do you mean?" Octavia asked, after a long, awkward silence. 

Because why would she know? Why would she need to know? Lexa lifted her head from her hands and sighed. "TV tropes," she said. "Or tropes in general, but this one is pretty TV and movie-specific. Basically, a theme or storyline that you see so often in media that it becomes sort of a shorthand for actually telling a story. Sometimes it can come in handy, because it allows something to be told without having to fill in all the details. The audience already knows because they've seen it so often. Sometimes... sometimes it's just something that you've seen so many times you know what's coming, because that's just the way things work, apparently, no matter how detrimental they are to the audience."

"So like a stereotype," Raven said. 

"In a way, yes. In this case, specifically, there's one that they – the people who created the TV Tropes website—"

"Which you should definitely not check out if you plan to be productive at any point in the next several hours after you click on the first link, because you will get lost following the links and suddenly realize that it's 2 am and you still haven't started your paper," Anya chimed in.

Lexa rolled her eyes. "Right. Anyway, the people who created the page call it Bury Your Gays. Or, alternately, Dead Lesbian Syndrome. Basically, the phenomenon where if a gay, lesbian, bisexual – some people don't like the term but I'm going to use queer as a shorthand here – character is introduced into the story, there is basically no chance that they will make it out of the story alive. Queer characters aren't allowed to have happy endings. They get beat up, they get killed, and if there were two of them, by some miracle, and they actually got to have something resembling a romantic subplot – never the main plot, it's never about _them_ because no one can relate to _that_ \- it is guaranteed that one of them will have to die, leaving the other one in misery. Because queer characters aren't allowed to have happy endings."

"That's..." Octavia started, but she didn't seem to know what that was, because the sentence went unfinished.

"Bullshit," Raven finally filled in for her. "That's bullshit."

"It is," Lexa said. "And yet that's the story that's always told, and what do you think it does to a person – especially a young person – when they go looking for someone who is like them on TV and that's what they see, every damn time? How are you supposed to believe that 'it gets better' when every show, every movie, if they show someone like you at all, which is rare enough, the inevitable conclusion to the story is not a good one? What kind of hope does that kid have, if they think that that's how things are going to be?"

"But you can't base your entire perception of reality on what you see on TV," Raven said. "That's not healthy."

"You're right," Lexa agreed. "It's not. But it's not like you have a choice sometimes. Maybe you're growing up in a small town in the middle of nowhere, and you don't know a single other queer person. Sure, there's the internet, but if you just start Googling, when you look at the top results you're going to find a whole hell of a lot more stories about tragedies than you are about people who've made it. It's getting better, but there is still a long, long way to go."

She wanted to look at Clarke, but she was afraid to, because she didn't know how all of this was settling, if she had ever thought about any of it before. She'd told Lexa that she'd fooled around with a few girls before, but it hadn't been anything like a relationship, and did she really have any idea what she as getting into? Knowing that the safety and comfort they felt when they were together, just the two of them, would very likely be stripped away the minute they set foot in the real world together... was she ready for that? Or would she change her mind?

"And then there's the part of the queer spectrum that you never see anywhere, because people don't even believe it exists," Anya said. "Even other queer people don't seem to believe it's real, and or think that it has any place in _their_ community."

"What's that?" Raven asked. 

"Asexuality," Anya replied. "People who don't experience sexual attraction. Yes, it's a thing."

"How would you show that, though?" Raven asked. "I mean, there are plenty of characters on TV who aren't having sex, who don't have relationships."

"To say there are 'plenty' might be an overstatement – anyone who is more than a background character will probably have some kind of relationship status mentioned at some point, unless relationships are never discussed at all. But yes, it can be hard to represent something that is characterized by the lack of something, rather than the presence. But it's not impossible. And even when you get a character that you think could actually fall into that category, inevitably something will come up to prove that nope, you were wrong. Because media doesn't really value non-romantic relationships."

"Like who?" Octavia asked. "Who is asexual?"

"Sherlock in the most recent incarnation. The BBC one, I should say. Who is also kind of a massive dick, so maybe we don't want him. I would argue Victor Frankenstein in Penny Dreadful, even with the atrocity of a romance they forced on him in season two. And despite the horrendous epilogue situation, Katniss Everdeen. The romance was forced on her; I don't think she actually _wanted_ to be kissing Gale _or_ Peeta, and it pissed me right the hell off that in the end they decided that she had to end up with one of them, and have kids even though it states pretty explicitly that she doesn't want them, at least in the books, I still haven't seen the last movie, and that Peeta talks her into it, which... ugh. Don't get me started. I'm sure there's more, but that's off the top of my head."

"So... you're...?" Raven looked like she wasn't actually sure she wanted to ask the question, or that she should be. It was a pretty personal question, but Anya had been the one to bring it up, and Lexa wasn't sure, suddenly, if she'd done it because she actually wanted to be having the conversation about it here and now, or whether she'd brought it up to deflect attention from Lexa. 

"Yes. I'm like the unicorn of LGBTQIA etc. community. The A does _not_ stand for ally." She rolled her eyes. 

Raven and Octavia both looked slightly boggled by the concept, and Clarke might have too, but Lexa still couldn't quite bring herself to look at her, and it was weakness, she knew, and she would have to face it sooner or later... but let it be later. 

"So... you've never...?" Again, the half-formed question, this time from Octavia. 

Anya let it hang there for a moment, maybe to make Octavia squirm or maybe because she genuinely wasn't sure what possible never Octavia was asking about. "Never had sex? I didn't say that. Never been in a relationship? I didn't say that either." She shrugged her shoulders, then let them fall. "Being asexual doesn't mean that you don't have a sex drive. It doesn't mean you can't or won't or don't want to have sex. It means that you don't experience sexual attraction to people. That's all. And it's kind of a spectrum of its own, but then what isn't? People like to put other people, and themselves, sometimes, into boxes, but it's not really that simple."

"If you've had sex, though," Octavia said, "how do you know that you're asexual? Maybe it was just really bad sex."

Anya snorted. "It wasn't. And I get it, it's hard to wrap your head around, because how do you prove a lack of something? It's not as easy as realizing, 'Oh, wow, I'm attracted to girls,' or whatever the case may be. For me, it was more of a realization, as everyone around me was talking about people that they thought were attractive, that they wanted to date or hook up with, that I just... didn't. I might be attracted to someone's personality, want to get to know them better, be friends, but... that was the extent of it."

Silence. More bafflement.

"I guess I'm just not getting it," Raven said. 

"Basically, it means that I have never looked at someone and thought, 'Wow, I would really like to fuck that person.'" Anya stretched her legs out in front of her. 

"But you did anyway?" Octavia was frowning, and it might have been comical, watching them try to puzzle this out, but Lexa had seen this all before, and dragging up those memories wasn't really what she wanted to do right this moment. She'd seen firsthand what it looked like when the queer community started playing Queerer Than Thou, and policing who belonged and who didn't, and it had turned her off to any involvement with the campus group, must to Costia's annoyance.

Anya shrugged. "Like I said, it doesn't mean you can't have or don't want sex. It doesn't mean you don't get aroused. It's... complicated. Sometimes more complicated than a potential partner is willing or able to handle, and I've got more important things to focus on right now. I just kind of look at arousal, libido, whatever you want to call it as just another bodily function, like the need to eat and sleep. And like eating and sleeping, I am perfectly capable of taking care of that need myself."

"So you masturbate?" 

Lexa looked over out of the corner of eye to see if Anya looked like she was ready to strangle Octavia, because seriously, none of this was any of her business, except Anya had kind of opened it up and made it their business, and looked surprisingly calm about it. Maybe she just wanted to actually see if she could get her – them – to understand.

"Yes."

"Okay, but then... what do you think about?" Octavia asked. "Like, you have to have _something_ you think about when you do that."

"You don't, though," Anya said. "You really don't. Maybe _you_ do, and that's fine. You do you – no pun intended. Or maybe pun fully intended." She grinned. "But for me, if I'm thinking about anything, it's usually just, 'Damn, tomorrow is going to be a long day and I really need to sleep.'"

"Endorphins are good for that," Clarke said, finally speaking up. "Also for relieving cramps."

"Yup." Anya smiled at her. "At least _someone_ understands me," she added with a wink. 

Octavia rubbed her temples. "You know, I feel like I've learned more over dessert than I have in half of my classes."

"If you really want to learn more about it," Anya said, "any of it, I can point you in the right direction. There are also classes – usually focused on Women's Studies – that you might be interested in, but if you do, check with me first because there are some teachers that you probably want to steer clear of."

"I'll have to think about it," Octavia said. "But thanks."

"Of course. That's what I'm here for, right? Warping – I mean shaping – young minds."

After that, conversation dwindled, and eventually Clarke suggested that maybe it was time to head home. While Octavia and Raven were helping clear the dishes, she finally looked at Lexa. "Are you okay?"

"Fine," Lexa said. "Just..." She shrugged. "Just tired, I guess." Tired as in bone-deep weary, worn down by the world and the empty promises that it offered that maybe someday things would be different. She tried to smile at Clarke and failed. 

"If you need anything, you can call me," Clarke said, lines forming between her eyebrows.

"I'll be all right," Lexa said, in a tone she hoped was reassuring, but probably wasn't.

Clarke shook her head. "Promise," she said. "If you need me, you call me."

Lexa hesitated, because she'd told Clarke over and over again that she didn't say things that she didn't mean, and she wasn't about to break that now. She didn't ever want to lie to her, no matter how much the truth hurt. Which meant she had to make a decision. Let her in, knowing that in the end it _might_ hurt, or keep her at arm's length, knowing with absolute certainty that it _would_.

"I promise," she said, and the briefest touch of Clarke's lips against her own sealed it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know... preaching to the choir here. I swear I didn't mean for there to be a big old lecture in the middle of this story. Anya's part of this chapter was what I was trying to work in... and then 307 happened, and it became this whole big other thing. But they've said what they needed to say, and everyone can move on now... we hope.
> 
> Speaking of Anya! Starting tomorrow, you will get to see what happened last summer, from Anya's POV. I thought it was going to be a quick, short thing. It wasn't. It's about 36K, so I'm posting it in chapters, but since it's backstory I didn't want to drag it out, so it will post DAILY for the next six days. So keep an eye out!


	77. Clarke

"We should have taken two cars," Octavia said as she slid into the back seat. Raven got shotgun by default, because trying to cram her leg with the brace in the back was an uncomfortable proposition. "Then you wouldn't need to leave your girl."

"We don't need to be together all time," Clarke said, shoving the key in the ignition and waiting for Raven to settle into her seat. "I'm pretty sure she's had enough of people for one evening."

Raven looked at her and shook her head as she fastened her seatbelt. "You're really blind, you know that?"

Clarke assumed that the question was rhetorical, so she just put the car in reverse and backed out, heading back toward their temporary home... where she would spend another night on the couch. Alone. "What do you mean, I'm blind?" she finally asked, because it annoyed her that Raven obviously thought she had a better grasp on what was going on in Clarke's world than she did. 

"You must be, or you would see the way she looks at you. The way her eyes follow you any time you get up, the way she only seems to relax when you're in her line of sight, or preferably next to her. She might be done with people for the night, but she sure as hell wasn't done with _you_." 

Clarke glanced over at her and wished she could reach out and wipe the smirk off of Raven's face. "It's not like that," she said. She made Lexa sound like some kind of lovesick puppy, like she would be pining after Clarke if they were apart for a night. The idea was ridiculous.

"So you didn't kiss her?" Raven asked. "Because I'm pretty sure I saw you kiss her."

"You weren't supposed to see that," Clarke grumbled. The truth was, she'd kind of forgotten there was anyone else in the room when she'd done it. Which she chalked up to the fact that when she was with Lexa, the rest of the world had a tendency to fade a little, pushed to the periphery. Especially when Lexa was upset. Maybe it was just the doctor in her, the healer, whatever you wanted to call it, that couldn't stand to see someone in pain, but when Lexa was upset all she wanted to do was make it right, whatever it took.

"Seriously, though," Octavia said. "I don't think I've ever seen anyone look so _thirsty_ in my life."

Clarke looked at her in the rearview mirror and rolled her eyes. "So you've never looked in the mirror when you're thinking about Lincoln, then?"

Octavia laughed. "That's not thirst, my friend."

Clarke snorted. "Right. Look, can you both just leave it? We've only been... together for a few days. I'm not even sure we're officially _together_ , if we're being honest. We're just taking it slow, figuring things out." 

"All right," Raven said, holding up her hands. "I'm just saying, if we'd taken two cars, you wouldn't be sleeping on the couch tonight."

Clarke parked the car, and they headed up to the apartment. Octavia almost immediately flipped on the TV, but somehow watching it wasn't the same mindless activity that it had been that afternoon. "Anya's right," Octavia said after flipping through several channels and finding something to be disgusted over within a few minutes every time. She pulled out her phone and started typing. A minute later, it beeped, and she suppressed a laugh.

"What?" Clarke asked.

"I texted Anya, 'You ruined TV for me.' She replied, 'You're welcome.'" 

"There's always the Food Network," Raven suggested. "Although if Guy Fieri's bleach blonde head pops up on the screen, you're turning it off."

They went to bed late, later than they had been the past few nights, as if they'd all realized that their break was coming to an end and they didn't want to waste any more of it on sleep than they had to. (Even if that was kind of the whole point of spring break for those who chose not to go somewhere where they could get sunburned, pickle their livers and make poor life decisions.) Not that they were really doing anything; Clarke thought maybe she would have to come up with something for them to actually go and _do_ tomorrow, just so they could say that they hadn't wasted the _entire_ vacation, but she had no idea what that might be. They were friends, but what did they truly all have in common? It made it hard to plan any kind of group activity. 

Never mind the fact that going out tomorrow with them would mean not spending time with Lexa (unless she invited Lexa...), but maybe that was a good thing. She'd told Octavia that they didn't need to be together all the time, and they didn't, but that didn't stop her from _wanting_ to be with Lexa all the time, or at least more of the time than she was. It didn't stop her from thinking that if she had to be sleeping on a couch, the one at Lexa and Anya's was perfectly comfortable, and came with certain fringe benefits... like Lexa. 

Clarke shook her head like she could shake away the thoughts of her, but it didn't work. Not even a little.

As she spread the sheets over the couch cushions, she told herself that she didn't miss Lexa, that it was ridiculous to miss someone you'd just left a few hours ago. She told herself that she needed to be cautious, because look what had happened last time she'd let herself get even a little bit involved with someone. And she was already more than a little bit involved. 

But Lexa wasn't Finn. Lexa was nothing like Finn. She wasn't a stalker, for one thing, or jealous or possessive or any of those things. If anything, she was holding Clarke at arm's length. Not that Clarke could blame her. Not that she didn't understand. But it didn't change the fact that she might like to be allowed in just a little bit closer.

Or a lot closer.

She laid down, pulling the blankets over herself and cuddling into them, the only light in the room coming from her phone as she typed.

**Clarke:** Good night, Lexa.

She had already decided that she wouldn't be upset (okay, maybe she would be a little upset, but she would understand) if Lexa didn't text back because she was already asleep. But a response came a moment later, like maybe Lexa had been staring at her phone, waiting for Clarke to text her. Clarke hoped she hadn't been waiting up for the message... but maybe a little bit of her kind of hoped that she had been. At least it would mean she wasn't alone with her inability to think about anything else for long.

**Lexa:** Good night, Clarke.

Clarke stared at the screen for a minute more, maybe hoping that Lexa would have something else to say, even though it would break the pattern that they had established long before their hearts had gotten tangled up in this. But nothing popped up, so she finally tucked the phone under the edge of her pillow and closed her eyes.

She felt like she'd only just fallen asleep when her phone started buzzing, not once like she'd gotten a text or some other kind of alert, but persistently like someone was calling her. Her heart was instantly in her throat, afraid that something had gone wrong, that someone had died. The screen was too bright to focus on, and she groaned as she fumbled with the controls to turn it down, squinting at the screen.

Lexa.

She swiped her finger across the screen quickly to answer. "Hey," she said softly. 

"Hey."

Clarke wasn't sure if there was actually a catch in Lexa's voice, or if she just imagined it, but it made her sit up, forcing herself awake. "What's up?"

"You made me promise."

It was a strange feeling, having your heart sink and swell at the same time. "I did," she said. "What's going on?"

"I just... couldn't sleep." There was definitely a catch now, or at least a hesitation, like she was trying to figure out how to tell the truth without telling the whole truth. Clarke sat up further, already looking for where her socks had ended up, just in case.

"Insomnia?" Clarke asked. "Or bad dreams?"

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other," Lexa said. "I can't get my head to shut up, so I can't sleep, and then when I finally do sleep, it still won't shut up." She sighed. "I just didn't want to be alone."

"I'm here," Clarke said. 

"I know."

And then there was silence, because Clarke knew what she wanted to say, but she wasn't sure that it was something that Lexa wanted to hear, or was ready to hear, and the last thing she wanted to do was give Lexa something else to freak out about. It was like walking a tightrope, trying to balance between too much and not enough. 

And then there was the part of her that wanted Lexa to say it first. She wanted Lexa to admit that she wanted Clarke there. Or maybe it was that she needed confirmation of it for her own selfish reasons. 

The apartment had an analog clock in the kitchen, which was there mostly for show because it had a tendency to stop randomly, but right now it was working fine, and the seconds ticked audibly by. Finally Clarke couldn't stand it anymore.

"I don't have to be," she said, at the same moment that Lexa blurted, "You could come here."

"Okay," Clarke said.

"Okay," Lexa said, a fraction of a breath later.

"I'll be there soon."

"Okay," Lexa repeated. 

Clarke didn't bother with real clothing, although she did shove some in a backpack for tomorrow, which was actually now today, not really paying much attention to what she was packing. She hoped none of it clashed too terribly in the light. She scribbled a note to Raven and Octavia, sure that when they read it in the morning they would share knowing smirks, and probably feel compelled to text her to tell her, 'I told you so.' 

None of that mattered now, though. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting from here to there, closing the distance between where she was and where she wanted to be, where Lexa wanted her to be, where she had never once felt like she didn't belong, and maybe that's why, even though there was no way that this wouldn't be complicated, it was also quite possibly the easiest thing she'd ever done. 

There was no one else on the road, and it was tempting to ignore the lights and stop signs and everything else that stood in her way, but the last thing she needed was to have a cop appear out of nowhere and give her a ticket. Not because she cared about the money part of it (although that wouldn't exactly go over well with her mother) but because she didn't want to deal with the delay it would cause, and the worry that it would cost Lexa. So she was a perfect driver all the way there, parked her car in one of the guest spots and went to the front door.

It opened before she could even get all the way to it, and Lexa motioned her inside. 

"You didn't have to come down," Clarke said. "I could have buzzed."

"Anya."

"Or texted you."

Lexa shrugged, wrapping her arms around herself, and whether she was trembling or shivering Clarke couldn't tell, but it didn't matter. She just followed her up the stairs, kicked off her shoes, and went inside, wrapping her arms around her as soon as the door was closed and locked behind them, and willed the shaking to subside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who might have missed it, I started posting a prequel/backstory piece from Anya's point-of-view that shows the aftermath of Costia's death. You can read it here: [The Summer of Our Discontent](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7989823/chapters/18285055).


	78. Lexa

Lexa wrapped her arms around Clarke's waist, closing her eyes and pressing her face into her neck, letting the world narrow to just the warmth of Clarke's skin, the feeling of being held, letting it seep through her and calm her breathing, steady her pounding heart. She felt Clarke's lips brush her temple, and her jaw, and then her ear as she whispered, "You're okay," which sent a shiver of an entirely different sort through her, the feeling of it settling in her core like she'd swallowed something warm and the heat of it was slowly radiating out to every limb.

She lifted her head then, pulling back just a little so she could look Clarke in the eye, searching... for what? What did she want to see? What did she want at all? Her body told her one thing, and her head told her another, and her heart was torn even as it tried to mend. Guilt gnawed at her, because she was thinking of Costia but also because she realized how easy it would be to _not_ think about her, if she just let herself not think, if she just allowed herself have one moment where she could do what she _wanted to_ instead of what she thought she _should_.

It had been so long since she'd felt like this, since she'd felt alive in every nerve ending. She felt lit from the inside out, electrified by every place that Clarke's body pressed against hers – fingers pressing into her back, between her shoulder blades, belly to belly and hip to hip as they both leaned back while refusing to let go.

She wanted... Clarke. She _wanted_ Clarke, and it terrified her just how much. How easy it would be to let everything else disappear into the background, fade into the shadows, and let this be all and everything, for a moment or an hour or a day. 

_Or a lifetime._

The thought came unbidden, and it was enough to make Lexa stumble back a step, breaking free of Clarke's grip on her. The moment she did, she was colder than ever and the shaking, which had begun to still, was back. 

It had been a week. Less than a week. They'd known each other for longer, but this... admitting that this was more than just a friendship, letting down her walls and letting Clarke inside of them, letting her reach into her chest and bandage all of the battered, torn places... it was new. Too new to be thinking about the future.

But wasn't that what Clarke had done? Wasn't that _why_ this was what it was, why it had become, or was becoming, whatever it was becoming? Before Clarke, she'd walked through every day numb (if she was lucky – if she wasn't then every step, every breath, was agony, not physically but emotionally, and maybe psychosomatically). She'd been alive but not living. Since she'd met Clarke, she'd stepped back from the brink of oblivion, let herself be drawn back into life, and now she was back in her skin, head and heart and body all becoming one again instead of detaching and trying to operate autonomously from one another, and there was pain in that too, but it was a beautiful pain because it was the pain that came with feeling _everything_ instead of feeling nothing. It was the pain of being born and not the pain of dying, and Anya had been the one to ask the question, 'Is life worth living?', over and over again, every day, but Clarke had been the one to answer it. 

Yes. Yes, life was worth living. 

And she shouldn't feel guilty for living it. She shouldn't feel guilty for wanting life to be about more than just surviving. Hadn't Clarke said that once? That, or something like it, right before Lexa kissed her the first time, right before Clarke ran away... and came back again. 

She'd left, and she'd come back.

People didn't do that in Lexa's world. People didn't come back. They left and they were gone, and she tried to forget them. Because what choice did she have?

But maybe there _was_ another choice. Maybe you could remember without letting it consume you. Maybe you could carry those you'd lost with you, let them occupy a place in your heart, without occupying its entirety. Maybe it was possible to love someone and let them go, and love someone else and hold on, for as long as you could, for as long as they would let you, for as long as it was right to do so.

And maybe it was okay to let yourself believe that that might last beyond this moment, this hour, this day. Maybe it was okay to let yourself believe that there could be a future, and that in that future, you wouldn't be alone. Even if it hadn't worked out the first time, even if it had ended in the worst kind of heartache, maybe it was okay to let yourself believe that this time, maybe, it could be different.

"I don't want to be a trope," Lexa whispered. "I don't want to be a tragedy."

Clarke looked at her, and her eyes were filled with sympathy, and empathy, with compassion and comfort and understanding. With love. Clarke looked at her, and _saw_ her, saw all of the messy broken bits and all of the strong ones too, saw all of the things that she let show and all of the things she tried to hide, and she loved her anyway.

Lexa's eyes filled with tears, and she tried to blink them back but couldn't keep one from escaping, and it slid down her cheek as Clarke pulled her in again, wrapped her arms around her and held her so tight there was hardly space to breathe, and their lips met and the kiss was gentle but not timid, and there was nothing held back, no uncertainty, no hesitation. This was a kiss that made a statement, made demands, made promises. 

This was a kiss born of heartbreak; not the kind that hurt but the kind that healed. This was their hearts breaking _open_ , this was their spirits, their souls, whatever you believed in (and as much as Lexa couldn't bring herself to believe in any kind of higher power, she also couldn't quite believe in _nothing_ , either) entangling even as their tongues did, and a part of each of them finding its home in the other.

And if Lexa was shaking now, it wasn't because she was cold. If her lip trembled as their mouths parted, and didn't immediately find each other again, it wasn't because she was scared... or at least not scared of losing Clarke. If anything, she was scared of losing herself... but that wouldn't happen either. They weren't the sort of people who, when they came together, lost their sense of who they were as individuals. If they were better together, it was because they made each other stronger apart. 

At least that's what Lexa told herself. It was what she wanted to believe, and maybe only time would really tell if it was true, but they'd been through a lot together already, and come out the other side better for it, hadn't they? She knew that _she_ was better for it...

Lexa let her hands slide down Clarke's arms, lacing their fingers together, and squeezed, then tugged her gently toward her bedroom, because they were still standing in the middle of the living room and she'd only just realized it, but even as she did she watched Clarke's face, searching for any sign that this wasn't what she wanted, that this was too much, too soon, that she was overstepping...

But no. There was no hesitation as Clarke followed her, and it was Clarke who locked the door behind them, out of habit maybe or maybe it was intentional, and the soft click of it echoed in the silence, and Lexa thought maybe they were both holding their breath, both waiting to see what the other would do, so she pulled Clarke in again, or maybe Clarke pulled her, or maybe there was no reason to try to keep track of who was doing what to whom because this wasn't a game they were playing where they needed to keep score. There would be no winner or loser. Whatever happened, it was both of them together. 

Lexa's legs hit the edge of her mattress, and she sat without really meaning to, and the moon crept in around the edges of her shades just enough for her to see Clarke's face, pale in the cool light, the faintest hint of a smile curving her lips as she leaned down, leaned in, and then Lexa was on her back, Clarke straddling her hips, the weight of her pressing Lexa into the rumpled blankets, their fingers still laced together as Clarke pinned her hands on either side of her head, and Lexa couldn't help the sound she made, somewhere between a sigh and a moan, and she couldn't help that she arched her back to press up against Clarke, and even if she could have she didn't want to. 

For moments or hours (she didn't know and she didn't care) it was only their lips meeting and parting, kisses that had no beginning and no end, their noses bumping, the tips sliding against one another as they changed the angle, the depth, the intensity, and Lexa finally freed her hands so that she could touch her, could trace her palms up Clarke's thighs, clad in flannel pajama pants (and how had she not noticed that Clarke hadn't even bothered to get dressed before coming to her, as if she didn't want to waste the time, or maybe she'd known this was going to happen, or maybe she'd only hoped, or maybe she'd just thought there was no point when they would just end up going back to sleep, together or apart, or maybe now wasn't the time to be thinking about this, Lexa, you idiot) and over her hips, and she let the tips of her fingers brush over the exposed skin of Clarke's back where her shirt had ridden up, and was rewarded with a shuddering breath against her cheek as Clarke pressed against her. 

"Maybe this isn't the best position?" Clarke suggested. The thought of letting go, even for a moment, seemed like the worst possible idea, but her feet were still on the floor and Clarke was probably in danger of one of her knees slipping off the edge of the bed and she was probably definitely right, so Lexa loosened her hold, sitting up when Clarke got up, following the warmth of her, drawn like a flower turning toward the sun. 

"Come here," Clarke said, taking her hands and pulling her back to her feet. "We're both overdressed."


	79. Clarke

Clarke wished there was more light, so that she could actually see Lexa as she peeled away her clothes, first the shirt she wore, and then the soft cotton pajama pants, sliding them down her hips, her thumbs hooking the elastic and dragging it down until the material slid the rest of the way by itself, pooling at Lexa's bare feet. She shivered, and Clarke slid her arms around her, pulling her close, kissing her lips, then her cheek and jaw and down her neck, across the sharp line of her clavicle and back again, until Lexa's fingers digging into her arms stopped her.

"Clarke," she whispered. "Please..."

She looked up, and Lexa's expression was unreadable, and not just because it was hard to see. Conflict boiled behind her eyes, rendered grayscale in the moonlight, but Clarke knew that they were green, knew that the shade of them shifted depending on the light and what she wore and her mood, knew that right now they would be a stormy muddle, and maybe this was too much, too soon, so she stopped, not letting go but keeping her hands still. 

Lexa looked back at her, unspoken words on her lips and Clarke wanted to kiss them, taste them, know what she was saying without her having to say it, but that wasn't how things worked. This was reality, not a storybook, and getting things right meant communicating, even when it was hard to say what needed saying. 

And yet Clarke couldn't make herself ask what was wrong, if anything was wrong, or if maybe Lexa just needed a moment to breathe, to compose herself before the possibility of doing so ceased to exist. She was torn – clearly she was torn – but between what and what? 

Lexa finally broke, looking away, and Clarke understood then, as she followed her gaze to the photo that sat on the nightstand, the one of Lexa and Costia, and she let go, let her hands fall, because this wasn't a decision that she wanted to influence one way or another, because whatever the conclusion was, it had to be Lexa's and Lexa's alone.

Clarke watched as Lexa reached out, took the frame and held it for a moment, not even looking at the picture; her eyes were closed. Then, slowly, deliberately, she went to her desk, opened the drawer, put it inside, and closed it before coming back.

It might have only been a few seconds, but they seemed to stretch into an eternity as they stood looking at each other, and then Lexa leaned in, kissed her, kissed her again, and if what had held her back, made her hesitate, was not forgotten then it was at least dismissed, and now her hands were under Clarke's clothes, touching her skin, and Clarke dropped her head against Lexa's shoulder as her fingers traced up her back and down again to her hips, muffling the sound she couldn't help making as Lexa's thumbs traced over her hipbones, her hands dipping lower still, and she bit her lip and then Lexa's neck, not hard, not even really intentionally, and it wouldn't leave a mark (probably) as she felt her pants drop, and then she was forced to let go so that her shirt could join them on the floor, and then there was nothing between them, no barrier separating her skin from Lexa's except the air which felt electrified between them, and then not even that as they came together again, lips and breasts and everything else, and it was too much and not enough all at once.

This time when they tumbled into the bed, Clarke knew – they both did – that they wouldn't be getting up again for a long time. Lexa drew the covers up against the chill, but it hardly felt necessary as heat flooded Clarke's body from the very core of her outward, and this wasn't like anyone or anything before, this wanting, this _needing_ , to know every inch of Lexa, and to be known. She ached with desire, and if her kisses were rougher than she meant them to be, it wasn't out of any wish to hurt Lexa, but because now that she let herself feel everything she'd been trying to hold back (for longer, she suspected, than she'd been consciously aware of feeling it) it felt like restraint was no longer an option.

Lexa's fingers slid into her hair, and her lips moved from Clarke's mouth to her ear. "Hey," she breathed. "Shhhh..." And Clarke knew the intention wasn't to quiet but to soothe, to remind her that there was no hurry. This was not a race; there was no deadline. Eventually the outside world would intrude, but right now, it was only them, and they could take all night if they wanted to.

The tension inside her eased, flooded away, and this time the kiss was soft, and deep, like melting, and it felt like falling and Clarke didn't even try to stop the momentum. 

They learned each other with hands and lips and the angles and curves of their own bodies, finding the ways that they fit together and the ways that they didn't, finding all of the places that they could touch and kiss that made their breath catch, that made them sigh, that made them moan. They both knew where this was going, where it would eventually end, but even in ending it was only another beginning, and there was no rush. 

Except eventually, whatever your head and heart say, eventually you hit a point where there is a rush, where desire overcomes whatever romantic notions you hold, and Clarke felt it in the way that Lexa's fingers dug, in the way that teeth scraped skin as she stifled the sounds that she was making that she didn't want to bleed through the wall for Anya to possibly overhear. She felt the tension in Lexa's body as they moved against each other, seeking more: more contact, more friction, more and more until more became enough.

So she let her hand slip between their bodies, fingers brushing Lexa's belly, and the crease where hip and body blended, sliding between her legs and into the heat there. She felt Lexa's hips buck, and then felt her reaching to do the same to Clarke. 

"Not yet," Clarke said softly, and Lexa's eyes opened, confusion mixed with fear, and Clarke knew she had only a second to reassure her or this might all fall apart. She leaned in, kissed her softly. "This is for you."

Lexa blinked, then nodded, but something had shifted. It didn't feel right. It was as if one of her walls had gone back up, and Clarke didn't know what she'd done wrong. What had a moment before felt absolutely right and effortless was now strained. Lexa's body was suddenly stiff, her muscles rigid, and Clarke wasn't sure she was even aware of the tension she held, like she was gritting her teeth and willing herself to get this _right_ , and she wondered if she'd miscalculated. Did Lexa think that she'd stopped her because she didn't want this? 

She'd never wanted anything more in her life.

"Lexa," she murmured, and Lexa opened her eyes, looking wary, like she thought she was about to be punished, or told something she didn't want to hear, and Clarke's heart ached seeing it. 

_Oh Lexa. Oh love._

She had to make it right.

So she slowed down again, took a metaphorical step back and returned to just kissing her, breathing words against her lips and along her jaw and down the column of her throat that she wasn't even sure Lexa could hear, but she hoped somehow she would understand anyway: 

_It's okay._

_You don't have to_ make _anything happen._

_Don't think about tomorrow, or yesterday. There is only now._

_There's only this moment, there is only us._

_Just breathe._

Lexa sighed, her lips shaping a word that she thought was her name, though no sound came out, and Clarke felt some of the tension ease, and as their lips met again she felt a little bit more slip away, and when she pressed her fingers back into the warmth and wet of her it was better this time, but still Lexa was holding back, and so she tried one last time to soothe her, her lips grazing her ear so that there was no way she couldn't hear: "Let go," she told her. "You're okay. You're safe."

_I love you._

The last words she didn't say out loud, but somehow she was sure Lexa heard them, Lexa knew, because she exhaled, and with that breath, she surrendered, and it was complete and unequivocal. It wasn't a fight anymore, it wasn't a battle where one of them would win and one would lose. It was a gift given, gratefully and gladly accepted, and when it was over Clarke wrapped her arms around Lexa and kissed away her tears and kissed the words from her lips that she couldn't say.

If the night had ended there, she would have accepted it without complaint. To have Lexa beside her, finally, fully at peace (even if it didn't last, and it wouldn't, it couldn't, not forever) was enough. She kissed her forehead, closed her eyes, let her breathing fall into rhythm with Lexa's as it slowed, let it lull her.

But then soft fingers sketched lines over her skin, leaving trails of goosebumps in their wake, painting invisible designs on Clarke's body, or maybe etching words with sweeping curves like calligraphy, rekindling the desire she'd thought was banked for the night, stoking the flames until she burned with it, and when she looked up at Lexa she saw that her lips had curved into something between a smirk and a smile, and she knew what she was doing. She knew exactly what she was doing to Clarke, and exactly how to do it.

And it had never been like this with anyone before. She'd had good sex, great sex, but this was more than that. It was _Lexa_ , she was sure it was Lexa, because here, now, in this moment, her head and her heart and her body all came together and said yes, yes this, yes her, _yes_.

And it was slow, until it wasn't, and it was an eternity over in an instant, and it was beautiful, and it was perfect, and when Clarke managed to reclaim control of her own body, she opened her eyes and blinked at Lexa in awe, because how? 

Lexa looked back at her and her eyes almost glowed in the light that filtered in, no longer stormy but clear warm pools that Clarke could easily sink into, and she didn't need Lexa to say it to know what she was thinking: _I love you too._

A few moments of shifting around and Clarke found herself with Lexa's back to her chest, one arm tucked under her pillow and the other draped over Lexa's side, their fingers laced together loosely. 

"Good night, Lexa," she whispered, squeezing her hand.

"Good night, Clarke," Lexa murmured, squeezing back.

Clarke listened as her breathing slowed, settled, felt herself starting to drift. Her lips brushed against the nape of Lexa's neck, and maybe she was already asleep, but maybe she wasn't, but she said it anyway, because it was true whether Lexa heard it or not: "You're not a tragedy, Lexa. You're a miracle."


	80. Lexa

Even before she was fully awake, Lexa was aware that she wasn't alone. It only took a second, maybe not even a second, a fraction of a second, for the pieces to slot back into place, for the memories of the night before to replay themselves, and the brief flash of tension was gone, leaving only warmth and lassitude in its wake. Her lips curved in a smile even before she opened her eyes, and she let herself enjoy the moment, let herself just be in it, without the outside world intruding and trying to chip away at the peace that she'd let herself claim. 

She felt Clarke shift beside her, felt her push herself up on her elbow, and then her fingers were tracing over the skin of Lexa's upper arm softly, and Lexa turned her head to look at her, to smile at her and draw her down into a kiss. "Good morning, Clarke," she said. 

"Good morning, Lexa." 

The sun found its way around the edges of her blinds, and lit Clarke's hair like a halo, and it was such a cliché but it was also so perfect that Lexa didn't mind. Whether there was really some kind of higher power out there or not, maybe something somewhere in the universe thought that this moment deserved a little Hollywood lighting. "Have you been awake long?"

"No, not long," Clarke said. "I hope I didn't wake you."

"You didn't," Lexa said. "You could have." 

"No." Clarke shook her head. "You looked... peaceful. I thought that probably didn't happen too often. I didn't want to take that from you."

Except those words did, or at least it put a crack in it, reminding her that there were things that she'd managed to forget, things that kept her awake at night, and sparked troubled dreams when sleep finally came. She nodded, turning her head back, telling herself it was because twisting around like that strained her neck, but it was also because she didn't want Clarke to see her face, to see the fractured calm in her eyes. 

Clarke pressed her lips to Lexa's shoulder, and maybe she realized what her words had done, or maybe she didn't, but then Lexa felt her fingertips tracing down her spine, and she shivered a little, knowing what she was seeing, knowing what almost certainly was coming, because how could it not? "This is beautiful," Clarke said. 

Which wasn't exactly what Lexa was expecting, but it was probably little more than a stay of execution, so to speak. "Thank you," Lexa said. "I got it in Australia."

"Is it... does it mean something?" 

Lexa bit the inside of her cheek. It did, and it didn't, and it was hard to explain, and she wasn't sure she wanted to, and if she just didn't say anything, Clarke would let it go, wouldn't she? She wouldn't demand answers that Lexa wasn't ready, or maybe not able, to give. 

But that didn't mean the question would go away.

"It was just a design I drew," she said. "It... I'm not sure I can really explain what it means. I'm not sure that there are words for it." It was about Costia, of course, because at the point at which she'd drawn it, at the time that she'd made the decision to have the strange doodle that had ended up on the edge of every page of notes she'd taken in every class while she'd been abroad, _everything_ was about Costia. But it was more than that. It was about herself, about feeling like she'd finally found a place in the sun, and about it all crumbling down and collapsing into darkness. It was about her mother, about losing her and not knowing how to work through that, especially not on her own, but on her own was the only choice she'd had for coping because there hadn't been anyone else. It was about her father and her grandparents, all of the almost-maybe-possibly friends she'd made in the cities and countries where they'd lived that in the end she'd always left behind, and about all of the not-quite-homes that she'd tried to hang on to and couldn't. 

"Can we not talk about it?" she asked. 

"We don't have to talk at all," Clarke said, and Lexa could hear the smile in her voice, and when she rolled over, she could see her smirking, see clearly that she was implying exactly what Lexa thought she was implying, and she rolled over fully, one hand finding Clarke's, lacing their fingers together as their lips met and everything else melted away.

Lexa blinked slowly as their breathing settled again, and it was later, the quality of the light that filtered into the room had changed, and she didn't know how long had passed and she didn't care, because the world was perfect and peaceful again, and her body felt soft and loose and nothing could touch her when she was like this, not even the memories she'd tried so hard to bury, if not forget (because she couldn't let herself forget, because what would she have to castigate herself with when things got dark if she forgot?). 

Hadn't Clarke said something about that? How with time you would start to remember more of the good things, and it would hurt less? It had been something like that, and she'd been talking about her father, of course, but it had been in response to Lexa asking if the pain ever went away, if it ever got easier, and the answer was yes and no and some days were better than others.

Today was a good day. Whatever got stirred up, Lexa refused to let it be anything but a good day, because she was young and alive and in love, and that love was returned – Clarke had said it, sort of accidentally once, and then again on purpose, only maybe not actually out loud, but she'd meant it both times, Lexa was sure she'd meant it – and they were on spring break which meant they didn't have to get up soon, or at all if they didn't want to (although eventually they would get hungry and be forced to face the world beyond the door, and please, Anya, be cool with this...) and so life was good. 

She opened her eyes again as she felt Clarke tracing over her other tattoo, this one on her right upper arm, and she could see the question in Clarke's face, the little lines between her eyebrows that said she wanted to ask, but didn't know if she should, didn't know if it would upset Lexa again. 

"That's my matching tattoo," Lexa said, "that doesn't match anything."

The lines deepened, and Lexa smiled and smoothed them away with the ball of her thumb. "I got it on my eighteenth birthday," she said. "We'd been talking about it for a while.... a month or two, at least. Costia..." She hesitated, searching Clarke's eyes for a reaction to the name, any indication that it upset her to hear about this, but they remained clear, only curious. "The thing with Costia was that once she got something into her head, she couldn't let it go. Once she decided something, she was committed to it fully, and she would take it to the nth degree, just... run with it until she hit a wall and then just blow right through that wall. Restraint was not her strong suit, and neither was moderation. It was one of the things I loved about her... and also the thing that drove me most crazy about her." She stopped again, not sure how to continue, or if she should. There had to be something somewhere that said that talking about your ex while naked in bed with someone new, someone you wanted to keep, was pretty much the opposite of a good idea.

"It's okay," Clarke said, when the silence stretched too long. "She's part of your story. A story that's permanently inked into your skin. I want to know." Still, Lexa hesitated, because how could she really want to know? How could it do anything but come between them? But Clarke's touch still lingered, and her gaze didn't waver. "Lexa," she said, "I don't say things I don't mean either."

Lexa let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding and nodded. "Before me, she had only ever dated guys. She said she'd never even really thought about the possibility of being attracted to girls beyond just thinking that they were pretty or whatever. At first we were just friends, and I tried so hard to not even let that happen, but like I said, once she decided something, that was it. And she decided we were going to be friends. And I don't know at what point it became more for her, if she was holding back as much as I was leading up to when it happened, but..." Lexa frowned. She could tell the story – the relevant part of the story – without going into details. "Anyway, we were friends, and then we were more than friends, and that... epiphany, I guess, that us being more than friends was a thing that could be, or that could be for her, that the married with two-point-five kids and a white picket fence and all of that, that narrative that she'd been told was what she was supposed to want – along with a fulfilling career, she was allowed to want that, too, I guess, she was allowed to be a success in spheres other than the domestic – it was like it flipped a switch in her. And this new part of her identity _consumed_ her. Which I guess isn't really unique to her. Like some people when they're young don't realize that it's possible to be a thing without that being all that you are? And this was the newest, brightest, shiniest part of her, and also it annoyed her parents, so that was always a bonus for her."

Clarke laughed softly. "I definitely resembled that remark sometimes," she said. "After my dad died, there were times when I would go out of my way to do things that I knew my mother would hate, just to piss her off. I don't know if it was because I wanted her attention, any attention, or what. It wasn't one of my better phases." She wrinkled her nose. "I'm not sure I've actually completely outgrown it." 

Lexa leaned in and kissed her softly. "So change it, if you don't like it."

"It's—" Clarke started, then stopped. "I was going to say, 'It's not that easy,' but it kind of is, isn't it?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "If you don't like the choices that you've made in the past, make different ones in the future."

Clarke nodded. "So what's the rest of the story with the tattoo?"

Lexa felt herself smiling, because when it came right down to it, the whole thing was kind of funny, and actually made her love the tattoo – which she'd always liked and found beautiful and been proud to wear – even more. "She became obsessed with all things lesbian. Historical figures, the gay rights movement, academic papers so dense and opaque and dry I fell asleep every time I tried to read them... all of it." She shook her head slightly. "One of the things that especially captured her interest was the idea of the Amazons, and she got it into her head that we were going to get Amazon tattoos. Now, who knows if the Amazons actually had tattoos, and if they did, what they would have looked like, but that didn't matter. That was secondary. She had the idea, and found some designs that she liked, and she decided that as soon as I turned eighteen, we were going to do it. She found the artist, made the appointment, worked with him to come up with a design based on the things she'd found that we really liked... the whole nine yards. Since it was my birthday, she let me go first."

Clarke was fighting back a grin, and Lexa didn't even try to hide her answering one. "I think I can see where this is going."

"I'm sure you can," Lexa said. "The minute the tattoo artist put the gun to my skin, Costia started to turn pale. She didn't pass out or throw up or anything, but by the time he was halfway through, I knew that as committed as she was to the cause – both of claiming her woman-loving-womanhood and of giving her parents apoplexy – the fact that it would be both permanent and painful was a little more than she could handle. When it was done, she admitted that she couldn't go through with it. That she'd been having doubts and that she'd been trying to psych herself up and that's really why she'd let me go first, but she just couldn't. Hence my matching tattoo that doesn't match anything."

"Were you mad at her, that she let you go through with it when she was already having second thoughts?" Clarke asked. 

"No," Lexa said. "Not at all. I would have wanted it even knowing that she wasn't getting one, although I'm not sure I knew that for sure until it was already part of me. I liked it. I liked the way it looked, and although I'm not a masochist, I liked the pain... or the fact that I could endure it, maybe. So no, I wasn't mad." 

"It suits you," Clarke said. "Lexa, Warrior Princess."

"Something like that," Lexa agreed. 

"Any others that I haven't discovered yet?" Clarke asked, her eyebrows going up, a serious question behind the teasing smile. 

"No," Lexa said. "Not yet."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Super early posting because I'm going to be out all day and I didn't want to leave you all hanging! Have a great day, everyone! ♥


	81. Clarke

Clarke couldn't stop looking at Lexa. A part of her wanted to think that this was all some kind of elaborate dream, and that any second now her alarm would go off and jerk her out of it. But she knew that it was real. It had happened. It was happening. And she was happy. 

When she'd woken up with Finn, it hadn't felt like this. There had been... if not panic, certainly a sense of unease, of uncertainty, and a plan forming in her head from the moment she cracked her eyes open about what she needed to do to get away. The people she'd slept with before him... she hadn't ever actually _slept_ with them. There had been sex, and then one or the other of them had gotten up and left, because it was high school and parents had stupid rules about boys and girls having sleepovers, or because they were just fooling around and sleeping next to each other would have made it feel like something else, something more, and they weren't ready for (or weren't interested in) that.

This... this was something else. Rather than thinking about getting away, she was thinking about how long she could reasonably hang on to this moment before they had to let reality intrude. From the hollow feeling in her stomach, probably not much longer, so she twined her arms around Lexa to pull her close, and closer, and kissed her again until both of their bodies felt a lot closer to liquid than solid and they were reminded that oxygen was necessary to sustaining life.

Lexa's lips brushed her neck as she smiled like she understood all of the things that Clarke wasn't saying out loud. "We're going to have to get up eventually," she said. "Anya will come to check on where I am at some point."

"Before or after she makes breakfast?" Clarke asked.

Lexa laughed. "After, I hope," she said. "But I'm not sure if she knows you're here."

It suddenly occurred to her that she wasn't sure just how quiet they'd managed to be the night before, and she was equally unsure how much wall the two rooms shared. Not that she was embarrassed or ashamed – that would imply that she'd done something that she knew she shouldn't, or thought she wasn't supposed to, that there was something to be ashamed of in this, and there wasn't, there absolutely wasn't – but she wasn't sure she was quite ready to be smirked at.

Lexa glanced at the clock then, her smile slipping away. "She might have figured it out, though, because she didn't wake me up earlier to go running. Unless maybe she decided not to go, either." She pressed her lips to the hollow where neck met jaw, then pushed herself to sitting, keeping the blanket pulled up even though neither of them had anything to hide from each other anymore. "We should go see about breakfast."

"And a shower," Clarke said.

"That too. Do you mind if I go first? Then I can deal with Anya while you're getting cleaned up."

"Be my guest," Clarke said.

A soft sound that was probably a laugh. "We're at my house," Lexa said. "I'm pretty sure that makes you my guest."

Clarke rolled her eyes, resisting the urge to pull her down and wipe the smirk from her face. "You know what I mean."

"I do," Lexa said. "You know where the towels are?" Clarke nodded. "Do you need clothes?"

Clarke wasn't entirely sure that Lexa's clothes would fit her, although maybe they were close enough in size that she could make do if she had to. "I packed things," she said, and then realized that she'd left her bag... somewhere. Had she brought it in from the car? She must have... right? "Did I bring my backpack in last night?"

"I think so," Lexa said. "It's probably in the living room." She leaned down to brush her lips against Clarke's. "I'll get it."

When Lexa got up, Clarke didn't even pretend that she wasn't watching her as she pulled on a pair of flannel pants and a t-shirt... and she didn't say anything when the shirt that she selected seemingly at random from the floor was not her own but Clarke's. Maybe it was intentional, maybe it wasn't, but either way, Clarke liked the idea that something of hers was still touching Lexa. 

She could hear Octavia's voice in her head, or maybe Raven's, or maybe both. _'You've got it bad.'_ They wouldn't even mean it unkindly... and they wouldn't be wrong. Had it really only been a week – less than a week, six days – since Lexa had kissed her? It seemed so much longer than that, like a lifetime had passed over the course of spring break. How could a person's heart change so much in such a short time? Because she would swear that she hadn't ever even thought of Lexa as anything but a friend before the kiss. But maybe she'd just been dealing with stuff, and known that Lexa was dealing with stuff, so she didn't _let_ herself think about it.

People talked about love at first sight, and this wasn't that... but like she'd told Lexa, when they'd kissed, even though she'd run away, it had really been the first thing that felt like it made sense in a very long time. Like a puzzle piece falling into place, and suddenly the whole picture became clear. 

Lexa came back with her backpack, setting it on the floor next to the bed. "I'll be back in a little bit," she said, and left again. Clarke made herself get up, even though she would have preferred to just stay in the safe little cocoon of Lexa's blankets, with the lingering warmth of her and the comforting scent of her shampoo on the pillow. If it was hard now, how much harder would it be when classes started back up, and they both had homework and other obligations? Before, they had only seen each other every couple of days, generally... would they make more time for each other during the week? Was there more time to be made? 

Maybe it was better not to think about it. Maybe she should just enjoy the couple of days that they had, and trust that things would work themselves out come Monday, and the days after. Except thinking about that also made her think about the fact that the end of the semester was approaching, and the finals that had seemed so far off suddenly loomed, not because she was actually worried about them but because she didn't know what came after. She'd assumed that she would spend the summer at home, but since Christmas that idea had lost any kind of appeal that it had once had. But she hadn't actually made any arrangements to do anything else, and that was a problem. Maybe she could pick up a summer class or two, but there was very little, if any, student housing for the summer term. 

She needed to talk to Octavia, see what she was doing, and Raven, maybe. Maybe she would have found someplace to stay by then, and maybe she would need a roommate for a few months. Maybe...

But she didn't let her think about the maybe that involved this room, this bed, because it wasn't really a maybe. Or it was too soon to be a maybe, and six or eight weeks wouldn't – or shouldn't – change that. This was too new, and pushing things too far, too fast, might break it, and that was the last thing that she wanted. She made herself get up, pull back on last night's pajamas, and made the bed for good measure.

Lexa came back into the room wrapped in a bathrobe and toweling off her hair. "Your turn," she said. "I made sure to leave you some hot water."

"Thanks," Clarke said. "I won't take long."

"Take as long as you want," Lexa said. "We actually don't run out of hot water, so." She smiled.

"Good to know." Clarke just stood there for a moment, looking at her again, that feeling of surreality rising up again. "Be back soon."

The hot water and suds washed away the layer of sweat from her skin, but it didn't rinse away the looseness of her muscles, the lazy peace that had settled into her limbs, and it felt so good to just be relaxed that she probably tested Lexa's assertion that they didn't run out of hot water a little more than she should have. When she finally emerged, Anya was putting breakfast on plates, and Lexa was sitting at the breakfast bar. 

"Good morning," Anya said, putting a plate in front of her. "I hope you slept well."

Clarke wondered if there was something hidden behind the words, a joke she wasn't getting, or maybe a jibe, but if there was Anya never actually get to the punchline. "I did," she said. "Thank you."

"Are you coming tonight?" Anya asked, after they'd all had the chance to eat a few bites.

"Coming where?" Clarke asked.

"To testing?" Anya frowned. "Octavia didn't tell you?"

"No," Clarke said. "What testing?"

"Octavia tests for her yellow belt tonight," Lexa explained. "It's... well, in the grand scheme of things, testing for yellow belt isn't a big deal, but every time you test, it's kind of a big deal."

"She didn't tell me," Clarke said. Unless she had and Clarke had just forgotten, but she was pretty sure that wasn't the case. Her memory wasn't perfect, but it was pretty good most of the time, and she was also good about putting things down in her calendar that she needed to remember, and she was _sure_ there was nothing about this in there. 

"It's at six," Anya said. "You probably want to get there a little early because we're only doing one test for everyone, so there will likely be a lot of parents, and the place isn't that big. Especially if Raven is coming, you'll want to make sure to get there while there's still the option of finding somewhere to sit that isn't just on the floor."

"Right," Clarke said. "We'll be there."

"Good." 

It bothered Clarke that Octavia hadn't told her, but she ended up spending most of the rest of the day with Lexa, and so she never said anything about it. She just showed up, Raven in tow, and when Octavia turned and saw them (because she _still_ hadn't mentioned that she was going to anything but a regular class when she'd left the apartment) she waved. Octavia waved back, but Clarke didn't miss the dirty look she shot in Anya and Lexa's direction. Both of them just shrugged, nonplussed.

Once things got started, Clarke wondered if maybe the reason that Octavia hadn't mentioned it was because she felt awkward about the fact that she was pretty much the only adult there who was actually testing for anything. The others – Anya, Lexa, and Lincoln among them – were black belts, and were mostly just there to help wrangle the kids, and to serve as partners for people when there was an odd number in the group that got called out to show off whatever they were testing at the moment.

Or maybe Octavia hadn't bothered because she knew that she would spend a lot of the time just sitting on the side, because she had only been training for a couple of months and didn't have that much to show off yet. 

"Anya, Lexa, come out," the giant hulk of a man who ran the school said, and Clarke watched as they stepped out into the middle of the floor. "Get a knife."

Clarke cringed at the words, even though the knife was obviously plastic. She cringed more as the instructor, Master Gustus, began to call out numbers, and they all watched as the knife traded hands back and forth, and Lexa and Anya took turns throwing each other to the floor in various ways, and pinning each other there in increasingly uncomfortable positions.

"Put the knife away," he said, but then it was replaced by a gun, and Clarke felt Raven tense next to her, and she reached out and took her hand without thinking, squeezing it tight. And then the gun went away, but they still didn't get to sit down. "This will be a little bit of a preview for some of you, something that you'll be working on." He looked at them. "Choking on the floor."

"They do this for _fun_?" Raven hissed, as Lexa shoved Anya down and straddled her hips, hands loosely at her throat... but not for long. With a quick twist of her hips, Anya threw her off, and swung her leg up and over to kick her in the face – not really, but it was clear that that was the intention.

"Yeah," Clarke said. Her stomach was in knots as she watched them flow from one move to another, and she was actively queasy when they got to the one where instead of straddling her hips, Anya was between Lexa's legs, and even though it was all perfectly safe, it was easy to imagine a situation that absolutely wasn't, and why knowing how to get away was important, and Lexa could take care of herself, she proved it on the spot, putting Anya in quite possibly the most awkward position yet, with Lexa pretty much sitting on her head, except that she was laying down, but Clarke was very, very glad when they both stood up and brushed themselves off and were sent back to their places along the wall.

Finally it was over, and Clarke helped Raven to stand, because her leg had stiffened up and gone numb as a result of their rather precarious perches on the windowsill, which was only kind of deep enough to qualify as a seat. She hugged her friend. "You should have told us."

Octavia rolled her eyes. "Clearly you found out anyway."

"You still should have told us. You were awesome."

"Thanks," Octavia said. 

"When do you get your new belt?" Raven asked.

"No idea," Octavia admitted. "I had thought it would be tonight, but I guess not."

"Usually you get it the next class," Lincoln said. "Which is kind of a bummer that the people who came to see you don't actually get to see you get it, but that's just how it goes."

"It's no big deal," Octavia said. 

Lexa came over then. "It is," she said. "You know how many people don't even make it this far? It's why I gave you a hard time when you first showed up. So many kids – even college kids – come in and train for a few weeks, and then they just disappear."

"That's not me," Octavia said. "I want to learn."

"I know," Lexa said. She looked toward the door, where the last of the younger students were trickling out the door with their parents. She took two steps back, and then motioned for Octavia to stand in front of her. "Remove belt."

"W—" Octavia stopped herself and did as she was told.

Lexa pulled something yellow from the back of her own belt and knelt in front of Octavia, unfolding it and wrapping it around her, shaping the knot and then pulling it tight before standing up and offering her hand to shake, bowing as she did so. "Congratulations."

Octavia looked down and grinned. "Thank you."

Lexa just nodded, and went back to Clarke's side. "That was nice of you," Clarke said. "To do it now." 

"She deserves it," Lexa said. "And the kids won't know she got it before them."

"I hope I never have to watch you actually test, if that's what happens when you're _not_ testing," Clarke said. "Some of that stuff..." She shook her head. "I know it's all fake. I know you're not going to hurt each other. But..." She shivered.

Lexa wrapped her arms around Clarke, hugging her tight. "I know," she said. "Trust me, I know. It's so hard, when younger students get to the choking on the floor where they're between your legs, and they wonder how anyone would ever end up in this position, why you would ever need to know this, and you're just biting your tongue, especially with the girls, because it's not really your place to say, 'If there is one thing - _one_ technique – you should master as far as self-defense goes, this is it.'" 

"I'm glad you know it," Clarke said. "I don't—" But she couldn't say it. The words dried up on her tongue.

"Nothing is going to happen to me," Lexa said. "I—"

"Don't promise," Clarke said, cutting her off. "You don't say things you don't mean, so don't promise."

Lexa's expression softened. "I was going to say, 'I love you.'"

"Oh." Clarke buried her face against Lexa's neck, and if this felt like completely the wrong moment and context to hear those words from her for the first time, maybe that was all the more reason for Lexa to say them, because maybe here and now was when she really needed to hear them. "I guess you can say that."

"I guess I can," Lexa said, but she didn't repeat it. She didn't have to. Clarke felt it, even after Lexa let go.


	82. Lexa

Lexa watched Clarke pick at her food, pushing it around her plate more than making any concerted effort to get it into her mouth. She couldn't blame her, really, considering that it was cafeteria food and only vaguely edible at the best of times, but it was clear that there was something more than just general lack of appeal that was killing her appetite. She reached across the table to touch her hand, then hesitated at the last second. They hadn't talked about this, about what was acceptable and what wasn't in public, about how much they wanted to share and with who and when. Everyone important in Lexa's life knew about them, and everyone that knew her on more than a basic level, or who had known her last year, knew about _her_ anyway, and would likely draw their own conclusions about them. 

But Clarke... she didn't know if Clarke was out at all, to anyone, or if she wanted to be, or if she felt it was necessary. Lexa had told her that she wouldn't be a secret, but that didn't mean they had to advertise things, either. They could be discreet without actively hiding their relationship. 

Clarke looked at her then, and at their hands that laid only fractions of an inch apart, close enough that Lexa could feel the warmth radiating from her skin. "What's wrong?" she asked.

Lexa frowned. "That's what I was going to ask you," she said. "Your lunch has to be cold by now."

"I'm not sure it was particularly warm to begin with," Clarke said. "But yeah." She smiled a bit sheepishly at Lexa. "But I asked first."

"Nothing's wrong," Lexa said. "Not with me."

Clarke looked back at their hands. "Why did you stop?"

Lexa bit the inside of her cheek. "I didn't know if you would want me to," she admitted. "Here, where people might see."

Clarke opened her mouth to say something, then closed it again, rethinking her words from the look on her face. "I don't mind if people see," she said after a minute. "I don't mind if you don't."

"I don't mind," Lexa said, and laid her hand over Clarke's. Clarke turned hers over to grip her fingers, and it was a little bit thrilling and a little bit terrifying to be doing this, to be holding hands in a very public place, where the rumor mill was always grinding. But maybe no one would notice, or maybe no one would care. One of the advantages to being two girls was that they were afforded a certain amount of leeway when it came to physical affection before people starting to think maybe there was something more going on. "So now it's your turn to answer," Lexa prompted. 

"What are you doing this weekend?" Clarke asked.

_You, I hope,_ Lexa thought, but the little lines forming between Clarke's eyebrows told her that this wasn't the time to be flip, even if Clarke might have appreciated the sentiment. "I don't have any plans," she said. "Why?"

"My mom wants me to come home," Clarke said. "For Easter. We're not religious, so I don't know why. Maybe because it's a long weekend, but we can barely stand to be around each other for more than a couple of hours. What does she going to think is going to happen if we're occupying the same house again for _days_?"

Lexa squeezed her hand. "When do we leave?" she asked. Because that had to be where this was going, didn't it? She'd offered to go with Clarke the next time that she went home, and now she was going, and this was her way of testing whether Lexa had actually meant what she'd said. She was calling Lexa's bluff, if it had been one. It hadn't.

"Friday morning," Clarke said. 

"All right," Lexa said. "Will there be church involved?"

Clarke shook her head. "We're not religious," she repeated. "I don't think _he_ is, either."

"He?"

"My mother's... boyfriend. There _really_ needs to be a better word for that when applied to old people." Clarke grinned. "His name is Marcus, but I've never called him that."

"What do you call him?"

"I don't," Clarke said. "I avoid talking to him whenever possible, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to work when we're there for four days."

"Probably not."

"I think we're going out to eat on Sunday, though," Clarke said. "My mom said something about getting Marcus to change the reservation when I asked if it would be all right if I brought someone home with me. Which she didn't sound thrilled about, but she said it was okay," she added hastily, before Lexa could ask. "She probably assumes it's Octavia, and she probably figures that she owes her somehow, after Christmas."

"You didn't tell her otherwise?" Lexa asked. 

"Should I have?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa suppressed a sigh. "Is it going to matter?" Clarke had said that it wouldn't, that the fact that she was a girl would be very low on the list of potential problems with someone that Clarke was dating, but it still rubbed her the wrong way that Clarke was intentionally withholding information from her mother about the person she was bringing home.

"No," Clarke said. "It's going to be awful and awkward no matter what." Lexa saw her shoulders slump. "It's okay if you don't want to go," she said. "I can tell her that you got a better offer." She smiled crookedly. 

"I'm going with you," Lexa said. It was partly because she had said she would, and she wasn't going to back down on that, and partly because she wanted to see where Clarke had grown up, wanted to get to know the place that had shaped the person who sat across from her. She even wanted to meet her mother, who Clarke didn't exactly paint in the most positive light, but then if she was pushed to talk about her own father what would she say? She doubted that it would be particularly rosy.

"Thank you." Clarke looked down at her phone. "I need to get to class." She got up to go dump her tray, and Lexa stood as well, but this time the space between them remained, neither of them moving to close it, and she just watched Clarke go with a sense of unease that she couldn't shake.

Friday morning Lexa got up with Anya for their usual run. They showered and had breakfast, and then Anya said she needed to finish packing, because she was going home for the weekend, too. "I skipped Christmas," she said. "So I'm contractually obligated to appear for Easter." She smiled. "Tell Clarke thank you for me."

"Thank you for what?" Lexa asked. 

"Taking you home with her so that I didn't have to make sure that there was enough food in the house to keep you fed while I was gone." The smile turned into a grin. 

Lexa rolled her eyes. "I am perfectly capable of making food for myself," she said. "I'm not _completely_ incompetent."

"Ramen does not count as food," Anya said. "Ramen from a packet doesn't, anyway." 

"Neither does macaroni and cheese from a box," Lexa pointed out, "and yet what were you eating the other day?"

"Extenuating circumstances," Anya said. "You didn't hear me complaining about your chicken nuggets."

"You gave me a lecture about how if I'd just waited half an hour, you would have been home to cook!" Lexa said. "Or did you conveniently forget that part?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Anya said blithely, then winked. "I'll see you Monday?"

"Yeah," Lexa said. "Assuming that everything goes well."

"You'll be fine," Anya said. "Just be your usual charming self."

"I can't even tell if you're being sarcastic," Lexa said.

"Me either," Anya said with a laugh, then came over to hug her, just for a second before letting go and retreating to her room, because they still weren't really hugging people, except sometimes when they were.

Clarke arrived not long after, and Lexa picked up her backpack and grabbed a small suitcase by its handle to take it down the stairs. It was maybe a little overkill for just a few days, but easier to pack in than a duffel bag where everything was likely to end up a wrinkled mess. She wanted to make a good impression, after all. Not that that had worked out with Costia's parents, but they'd already had _ideas_ about her before they ever met her, and she'd been fighting an uphill battle the entire time. She had no idea what Clarke's mother might know about her, but she suspected it wasn't much. Which meant she really did have to rely on her own charm... which wasn't exactly in large supply, if she was being honest. 

But she wanted to get this right, because this was Clarke and it mattered. _She_ mattered. And maybe Clarke wouldn't care if her mother hated Lexa, but she really didn't want to go through that again. 

"You look like you're already carsick," Clarke said. "Everything okay?"

"I don't get carsick," Lexa said. "Unless I try to read in the car. That's generally a bad idea."

"That doesn't answer my question," Clarke pointed out as she took Lexa's suitcase and put it in the trunk, wedging it in beside a laundry bag that was stuffed full. "Why should I pay to do laundry when I can do it at home for free?" she asked at Lexa's raised eyebrow. 

"As long as you're not planning to have your mother do it for you," Lexa said.

"My mom has never done my laundry," Clarke said. "Not once. My dad did it, and then I did it. So no worries there." She went around to the driver's side and got in, putting the key in the ignition but not turning it until Lexa had buckled her seatbelt. "My parents always told me that the car wouldn't start until everyone was buckled," she said. "I genuinely believed them for a long time."

"My mom said the same thing," Lexa said. "Then my grandfather told me that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard, and of course cars could go without seatbelts being buckled, and that was how idiots got killed in car accidents."

Clarke looked at her, blinking slowly like she couldn't quite believe what she was hearing. "How old were you when he said that?"

"Eight."

"Wow. Nice guy."

Lexa shrugged. "He thought he _was_ being nice, clearing up any misconceptions I might have about the world."

"You were _eight_."

"And look how well-adjusted I turned out," Lexa said, meaning it to be a joke but it wasn't funny and neither of them laughed. 

"I'm sorry your grandfather was kind of an asshole," Clarke said. 

"Me too," Lexa said. She forced a smile. "We should get going."

Clarke sighed. "If you insist."

"Does your mom have photo albums of you when you were a kid?" Lexa asked.

"Yes," Clarke said, like the answer should have been obvious. "Of course."

"Then I insist."


	83. Clarke

As soon as they hit the highway, Clarke turned up the radio, but they quickly got sick of the commercials (and they would be driving out of range of the station soon anyway) and switched over to the mix CDs that Octavia had made for Clarke for Christmas. It turned out that despite Lexa's roughly year-long moratorium on listening to anything with words, she actually knew quite a bit of music, or at least the choruses, and wasn't embarrassed to sing along. She had a nice voice, but Clarke didn't say anything, because she got the feeling that if she did, the not embarrassed part might change, and since it seemed like the combination of music and movement had caused Lexa to leave her melancholy in their wake, she didn't want to rock the boat.

Too soon, Clarke started to see signs counting down the miles to home, and then before she was really ready they were off the highway and onto the surface streets, and then pulling into the driveway of the place that she had, up until recently, thought of as home. Now home was... She looked over at Lexa, at the way that she had pushed her sunglasses up onto her head to be better able to take it all in. Now home was here in the car with her, or at least part of her home was. Raven was house-and-cat-sitting again, and Octavia had gone home with Bellamy to spend the holiday with their mother, even though she would almost certainly be working. 

"So this is it," Lexa said. "Casa de Griffin."

"This is it," Clarke said. She looked over at Lexa, saw the lines forming between her brows, and reached out to smooth them away. "We could still turn back," she said, not entirely joking. "I could say I had car trouble."

Lexa shook her head. "We've come too far to turn back now." She looked like she was going to say more, but then she didn't. She just looked back at the house, and Clarke thought that maybe she was a little pale, a little green around the edges, even.

"It's okay," she said softly, laying her hand over Lexa's. "It's... it won't be like Costia's parents," she said. "My mom's not like that."

"How do you know?" Lexa asked. "If you've never—how do you know?"

"Because whatever issues I have with my mother, that's not one of them," Clarke said. "She'll see that I'm happy and that's all that will matter. She'll love you because I love you."

Lexa looked at her, blinked, and there it was again, those words actually being spoken out loud for the first time at the exact wrong moment that maybe was exactly the right one. "Okay," she said softly. 

Clarke would have kissed her, but just then the front door opened, and her mother stepped out... preceded by her belly by a pretty decent margin, and somehow Clarke wasn't quite prepared for that. She saw a hand reach past her mother to hold open the screen, and she _definitely_ hadn't been prepared for that. She'd kind of been hoping that they would have the house to themselves for a little while before her mother and Marcus got home from work, but apparently they'd decided to take the day off.

She squeezed Lexa's hand one more time, then pushed her door open and got out, stepping around it to face whatever was about to happen next.  
"Clarke," her mother said, holding out her arms and pulling her into an awkward hug, made more awkward by the fact that apparently her as-yet-unborn little sister didn't appreciate having her personal bubble invaded, and Clarke could swear that she kicked her in retaliation. "It's so good to see you."

"You too," Clarke said, focusing on her face because it was seriously too weird otherwise. 

Lexa was still standing next to the car, the passenger side door still open like she wasn't completely sure whether she was supposed to be getting out of the car, or maybe she needed it as a shield between herself and the family reunion. Clarke looked over at her, and her mother followed her gaze. Clarke could tell from the expression on her face that she'd been right about her mother assuming that it would be Octavia with her, because now she looked perplexed. 

"Mom, this is Lexa. Lexa, Mom."

Lexa finally closed the door and came around, offering her hand, her back straight like a soldier at attention, and Clarke wondered if that was something she'd had forced on her, or if her posture would have been that good no matter what. It made her want to trace a finger down Lexa's spine, to follow the slight curve of it, the dip at the small of it, and to watch her shiver at the touch. 

Her cheeks flushed slightly, and she shoved the thought down. 

"It's nice to meet you, Dr. Griffin," Lexa said.

"You can call me Abby," she said, smiling in a way that was mostly genuine. 

"And I'm Marcus." He offered his hand, and Lexa shook it. "We're glad you're both here."

Clarke wondered how true that actually was, but she didn't want to get into a fight. Not before they'd even made it in the door. But a few steps in, and her hackles were already up, because the first thing she noticed was the boxes. Empty ones, still in their flattened state, leaned against one wall, and a stack of full ones in the corner. 

She'd forgotten. Somehow she'd forgotten that her mother had mentioned that they were planning to sell the house and move somewhere else, get a fresh start in a place of their own, a place that contained no trace of her father, or of her either, probably. She glanced out the window, but there was no For Sale sign on the lawn, which meant... what? Her stomach clenched, and she felt like she'd walked straight into a trap.

She felt the back of Lexa's hand brush hers, and then her index finger hooked Clarke's and squeezed. It was all Clarke could do not to burst into tears at the gentle reassurance that whatever was going on here, however much things were changing, no matter what she was losing, she wasn't alone.

"You'll have to forgive us, Lexa," her mom said. "We've been using the guest room for storage, so it's a bit of a mess. We cleaned it up as best we could when Clarke said she would be bringing someone home, but you'll be sharing it with some boxes."

"It's fine," Lexa said, before Clarke could even think of how to respond. "I don't mind."

Clarke glanced over at her, confused. She'd thought... but maybe she'd thought wrong. "You can always just stay in my room," she said. "If you want." It wasn't exactly comfortable, having this conversation in front of her mother, and maybe she shouldn't have said anything, but she'd assumed... But then everyone knew what happened when you assumed, didn't they? 

"That works too," Lexa said, and she tightened her finger around Clarke's again, and it had to mean something that she hadn't immediately let go at the first sign of misunderstanding, didn't it? God, this was all so fucked up, and maybe Clarke should have made it clear from the start with her mother that the person she was bringing home was more than just a friend, but it had felt like none of her business, or maybe she'd wanted to make it awkward for her mother but it was mostly just awkward for her and Lexa, and why did _he_ have to be here to make it all worse? 

"My room is this way," Clarke said, leading Lexa down the hall to her bedroom and pulling her inside, shutting the door behind them. "I'm sorry," she said immediately. "I shouldn't have dragged you into this."

"You didn't _drag_ me into anything. If I remember correctly, I volunteered, and you called me crazy, and possibly also made some sort of biblical and-or fable reference," Lexa said, with that tiny quirk of the corner of her mouth that was the closest she got to smiling so much of the time, Clarke had come to appreciate it as much as she would a full-on grin from someone else.

"I think you were the one who made that reference," Clarke countered. "I'm pretty sure I just stuck to crazy."

"Maybe." Lexa finally let her eyes wander from Clarke's face, taking in the posters on the walls, and the art prints, and then Clarke's own art that she'd liked well enough to hang up, the worn blue bedspread that her mother must have straightened because Clarke never really bothered, and she suspected she'd probably changed the sheets as well, and Clarke would have been pissed at the invasion of privacy but she didn't live here anymore, and even though it had only been a few months, the room already didn't feel like it belonged to her anymore, or at least not the her that she was now. It belonged to someone she had been, someone she had outgrown, by choice in some ways and by necessity in others. 

Clarke watched Lexa's face, watched the way her eyebrows went up at things that surprised or pleased her, down at things that maybe confused her, watched the curve of her lips shift, watched her read the spines of the books on her bookshelf, reaching out occasionally to brush her fingers over one or another of them, maybe ones that intrigued her or maybe ones she'd read and loved as well. She picked up a picture that was tucked into the corner of Clarke's mirror. "Is this your father?" she asked.

Clarke nodded, but of course Lexa wasn't looking at her to see it. "Yes. That was the summer before he died. We had rented a cottage up in Maine, and for those two weeks that we were there, it felt... it felt like things might actually be okay. That my family might not actually fall apart like it felt like it had been. But once we came home..." She shrugged. "I don't know why I didn't bring it with me. I guess maybe I just wanted a fresh start."

"I can understand that," Lexa said. "Sometimes it's easier not to be reminded."

"Yeah." 

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. "Did you two want lunch?" her mom called through it. "I can make sandwiches, or there's probably some leftovers."

"We'll be right out," Clarke called back. She looked at Lexa. "I can't promise that this is going to be easy," she said softly. "I can't promise that we'll be able to keep up the happy family act."

"I'm not asking you to," Lexa said. "You don't have to put on an act for my benefit."

"If I don't put on an act," Clarke said, "things could get ugly. Fast."

Lexa frowned slightly, like she was trying to think of the best way to say something, and Clarke braced herself for whatever it might be, because she was pretty sure that Lexa wasn't in the habit of pulling punches. "Maybe that's what needs to happen," she said. "Maybe you – both of you – just need to lay it all out there. A wound can't heal if you don't clean it first, right?"

"I don't want you to have to be part of that," Clarke said. "That's..." She stopped as realization hit. "That's not who I want you to think that I am. That's not who I want to be in your eyes."

Lexa tilted her head. "Then be the person that you want me to see," she said. "Not just as a mask that you wear. _Be_ that person."

Which was easier said than done, and Clarke knew that Lexa knew it. But however hard it might be, it was the answer, wasn't it? It was obvious, and it was probably going to hurt like hell, but just like with everything else, the only way out was through, and at least she wouldn't have to bind her wounds in the aftermath without help.


	84. Lexa

Despite what she'd said, Lexa was wondering if she'd actually made the right decision coming with Clarke for the weekend. She'd offered, and followed through when Clarke asked, but now, faced with it, she wasn't sure that her presence was actually what Clarke needed. She didn't know what role she was supposed to fill here, whether she was supposed to stand firmly on Clarke's side or whether she was supposed to be neutral, whether she was supposed to keep Clarke from having it out with her mother or whether she was supposed to encourage her to get it all out. 

It wasn't like she had much experience with this kind of thing; she and her father just avoided each other most of the time. You couldn't have emotional conflict if there was no emotion. They were like parts of a machine – they might be forced into close proximity over and over again, but it didn't _mean_ anything. They were just pieces of metal, cold and hard and grinding away at life out of habit or necessity.

If you could call that living.

The thought popped into her head, and it had Anya's voice, and Clarke's, and maybe even a little of her own. And maybe it wasn't, but it was a pattern that they had followed for more than a decade, and it worked for them, didn't it? Even if it didn't, what did it matter now? She had moved on. Maybe he had too. She didn't know. She told herself she didn't care. 

Even if she did, here and now wasn't the time for it. 

She wanted to reach out to Clarke, to wrap her arms around her, hold her close and tight and tell her that it would be okay somehow... but she wasn't actually sure whether it was because she thought Clarke needed the comfort, or because she herself did. So she pushed it aside. "Didn't your mother say something about lunch?" she asked.

"Yes," Clarke said. She turned toward the door, then turned back, frowning. "Do you want to sleep in the guest room?" she asked. "If you're more comf—"

Lexa shook her head, cutting her off. "I want to be with you."

"Okay," Clarke said. "I just... wanted to make sure."

"Do _you_ want me to?" Lexa asked. "We didn't talk about this."

"No!" Clarke said. "You're – we're –" She shook her head. "You're here with me. I want you _with_ me."

"What does that mean to you?" Lexa asked, because the last thing she wanted was to make things _more_ awkward by not being on the same page. 

Clarke frowned, maybe because she was frustrated or annoyed, but Lexa thought it was probably just because she was thinking, trying to figure out something she hadn't really considered before now. "To me it means we don't hide," she said. "We don't need to make any kind of public service announcement about it, but... we just are. Us. Together."

Which didn't exactly clarify things, but Lexa thought she probably got what Clarke was saying. They acted as if Clarke's... not parents, they weren't her parents and she didn't think it would go over well if she slipped and called them that, but in any case, Clarke's mom and Marcus... knew about them, and let them figure it out on their own if they were confused. They didn't go out of their way to make it in their face, but they didn't restrain themselves from doing anything that they might otherwise do around their friends, just because it ran the risk of giving the impression that they were more than friends.

Because they _were_ more than friends. 

But it was still new (had it really only been a week?) and maybe a little bit fragile, and although Lexa would never agree to be kept a secret, she also very much understood the impulse to not make a fuss. If they didn't turn it into a confrontation, they could keep themselves safe.

"Okay," Lexa said. She forced a smile. "Are you ready for this?"

"No," Clarke said. "But it's a little late for that." She opened the door, and went back into the main living area, where Dr. Griffin – Abby – was packing books into a box. 

"We actually don't have much to eat, as it turns out," she said when she saw them. "But we can put together some sandwiches, and Marcus said that he would stop at the store on the way home – he had a few things he realized he needed to get done so he went in to work for a little bit."

Lexa could almost feel the tension draining from Clarke as soon as her mother mentioned that Marcus was gone, and a few of the knots that were beginning to cluster along her own spine and up her neck eased a little.

"Actually," Clarke said, "I was thinking maybe we could go to the diner." 

It didn't take a genius to figure out that the suggestion was some kind of olive branch that Clarke was extending. The look on Abby's face said it all. She smiled possibly the first really genuine smile that Lexa had seen, a smile that made it all the way to her eyes, even if she also looked a little surprised. "That's a great idea," she said. "Let me just get my purse."

The drive to the diner was quiet, with Lexa sitting in the back and feeling a little bit like a third wheel, but what else was she going to do? She wanted food, for one, and although she might have liked the opportunity to explore more of Clarke's childhood home, she wasn't going to snoop while they were out without her. Thankfully it was a short drive, and the place wasn't too busy when they go there so they were seated right away. 

Lexa slid into the booth first, taking the side that put her back to the wall, so that she could see everyone and no one could sneak up behind her. She wasn't necessarily thrilled about the fact that she would have to make Clarke get up if she wanted to, but if they were going to avoid bumping elbows the entire time, it was the compromise she had to make. Abby wedged herself in across from them with a soft grunt and a wry smile. "I am so ready for this to be over," she said.

Clarke's mouth twisted, and Lexa nudged her knee under the table, reassurance that she was there and maybe a reminder that she had made the decision to try to be the bigger person. "It can't be that much longer," she said finally. "You said you were due in June, right?"

"Yes," Abby said. "Early June, and if she decides to show up before that, you won't hear my complaining, as long as it's not too long before."

"Are you going to be ready?" Clarke asked. "It looks like you're... you must have another place already, if you're packing?"

Abby smiled, and there was something sad in it. "We do. Everything happened really quickly. We found a place, and of course there was mountains of paperwork because that's how these things work, but then before we could even put the house on the market, Jackson – you remember him?" Clarke nodded. "I had mentioned to him that we were going to be selling, and he said that he was interested."

"Oh," Clarke said. "So... I guess I should start packing this weekend."

"Probably," her mother replied, "but you can always come back another weekend, if you don't trust me to do it."

"It's not that I don't trust you," Clarke said. "I just... need to figure out what to save and what can go, I guess."

"That's been the hardest part," Abby said. "There's a lot of memories in that house."

"Then why are you selling it?" Clarke asked. "If you don't want to leave it, why are you selling it? Or already did sell it? Why—"

They were interrupted then by their server coming up to the table to take their orders. Although all-day breakfast had a certain appeal, Lexa decided on grilled cheese and French fries, and Clarke told her that this place made the best chocolate milkshakes, so she got one of those as well. She was sure that Anya wouldn't approve, but she was equally sure that it wasn't going to kill her to let herself eat her feelings – or Clarke's feelings, she wasn't sure where one ended and the other began right now – for one meal. 

"We wanted our own place," Abby said, when they were alone again. "We wanted a house without the upkeep of the yard, without having to worry about dealing with snow in the winter. We got a condo, because it's just easier. Especially with you at school. You're going to be gone more of the year than not. It just makes more sense."

"Maybe for you," Clarke said. "Easier for you to just start over with your new little family, forget—"

"There's still a room for you, Clarke. We're not trying to force you out, if that's what you're thinking. I have tried to make this as easy a transition for you as possible, but you're determined to—"

The words piled up between them, forming a wall as they both talked without listening, and Lexa could see it happening, feel the tension building like an electric current...

"Stop." The word came out a gasp, almost a wheeze, and then again, this time a command. "Stop."

Abby and Clarke both looked at Lexa like they'd forgotten she was there, and maybe they had. She was just a bystander, collateral damage in their war, but she wasn't going to let herself continue to be. There were things that were so broken they couldn't be fixed; this wasn't one of them. If they would just _stop_ , if they would just _listen_... But they wouldn't. Not unless someone made them. 

She looked at Abby first, trying to keep her tone gentle even if her words weren't. "Clarke is allowed to feel angry," she said. "She's allowed to feel betrayed. She started to lose her childhood when she lost her father, and now she's losing more of it by losing her home. There is no way to make that transition easy. None." She didn't even wait for a reaction, or a response. She just turned her attention to Clarke and let the words spill out, because there was no turning back, and maybe this was the worst thing she could possibly do, maybe she was getting this all wrong, but she was in it not, committed, and had to stay the course, whatever the cost. "But it's just a house, Clarke," she said. "It's just four walls and a ceiling and floor, just a box that you've used to hold your memories. But you know that they're not really imbued in those walls, that ceiling, that floor. They're here," she touched Clarke's forehead, "and here," she touched her heart, and let her fingers linger there, lost for a second in remembering Anya doing this same thing to her, reminding her that when you lose someone, they're not really gone. "They're in you. No matter where you live, he's with you. A change of scenery doesn't – can't – change that. It's just a house. It's what's here," she flattened her palm, let herself feel the throb beneath Clarke's skin, "that makes it home. You can take that with you."

And then there was silence, and Lexa worried that she'd overstepped, that one or both of the Griffin women would blow up at her, tell her that it wasn't her place to tell them how to handle things. (It wasn't, she knew it wasn't, but she couldn't just sit there and watch the relationship that she was pretty sure they both wanted to salvage implode, but oh shit what had she done?) She was terrified that when Clarke looked at her, it wouldn't be with fury, which she could work with, but with coldness, distance, rejection. 

Maybe she was wrong. Maybe a house was more than just a box, maybe her experience of having a new one every year or so, and every one as blank and empty as the next, had skewed her perception of how these things worked. 

"I'm afraid I _will_ forget," Clarke said, her voice barely a whisper, peeling Lexa's hand from her chest but not letting it go. "I'm afraid that I won't be able to hold on with nothing to remind me."

"Oh sweetheart," Abby said, reaching across the table. "You're not going to forget. And you can go through the albums, take your favorites to have for yourself. As many as you want."

Clarke nodded, sniffling, and Abby handed her a napkin which she used to dab at her eyes, and the cloud over their table seemed to dissipate, not completely, not like a storm that washes everything clean, but at least it didn't feel like even breathing wrong might spark an explosion. Conversation turned to more neutral topics, and their food arrived to distract them. 

When they left, Clarke pushed through the door first, while her mother was still paying the bill, and Lexa followed. Clarke looked at her, and her eyes flooded with tears, and Lexa just pulled her close and held her, letting her cry. When Abby came out and saw them, her eyes went wide, and she looked ready to jump in, to try and intervene. Lexa just shook her head slightly, and was surprised when Abby nodded and backed off, going to wait for them in the car. 

Finally the sobs subsided into hiccups, and Lexa pushed back a lock of Clarke's hair that had plastered itself to her cheek. "Better?" she asked. 

"Maybe," Clarke said. "A little." 

"Okay." Lexa traced her thumb along her jaw. "You can do this," she said. 

"Not without you," Clarke whispered. 

_You can,_ Lexa thought. _You are strong enough, whether you know it or not._ But what she said was, "Then it's a good thing I'm here, isn't it?"


	85. Clarke

When they got back to the house, they retreated to Clarke's room. Once the door was closed, Clarke had to fight to not fall back into Lexa's arms, to bury her face against her neck and cling to her so that she couldn't slip away like everything else seemed to be. Instead she picked up an old ticket stub from the top of her dresser and glanced at it without reading what it was actually from before setting it down again. How was she supposed to pack up an entire lifetime into boxes and let it be carted away to a place she'd never seen and where she would never really belong?

"I'm sorry," Lexa said softly, "if I overstepped. If I upset you. It wasn't my intention."

Clarke looked up, startled at the words, at the idea that Lexa would even think that it was a possibility that she would be upset with _her_. But maybe it wasn't such a stretch; the same words out of someone else's mouth might have had her seething. "You didn't upset me," she said. "You were right. Everything you said was right."

"It's easier for someone outside of the situation to see things sometimes," Lexa said. "Without all of the loaded history and years of context."

"Maybe seeing through bullshit is your superpower," Clarke joked. 

"Maybe it is," Lexa said. 

Clarke picked up another scrap of her past – was it memorabilia or just debris? – and turned it over, but despite the fact that it fit in the palm of her hand, she couldn't take it in, couldn't process what she was seeing, and then her eyes swam with tears.

Lexa's hands closed around her, and she took the thing, whatever it was, and set it back on the dresser. "Come lay down," she said softly, leading her over to the bed. "Just for a little while." It wasn't really a question, but it wasn't quite a command. Even so, it was easiest just to acquiesce. 

Clarke didn't sleep, not really, not fully, but she obediently closed her eyes and let herself be lulled by Lexa's fingers sliding through her hair, over and over, and the thud of her heartbeat under Clarke's palm. She drifted, her thoughts wandering to what Lexa had said about a house just being a box to keep memories in, wondering if she was right, if she was making a bigger deal about this than it really was, if it was really about the house or if it was about the fact that she felt like her mother had just decided to give up on her, after she'd worked her whole life to do and be what her mother wanted. 

It was what she wanted, too, of course... wasn't it? She wanted to help people. That much she knew. She had always been like that, getting involved in things even when sometimes it would have been easier (and maybe even better) for her to stay out of it, and stubborn as anything when she set her mind to something. So she had to believe that this had all been her own idea, that her mother hadn't forced her onto this path, just guided her along the way when it became clear that she was likely going to follow in her footsteps.

"It won't be home," she mumbled, her lips brushing against Lexa's neck. "When they move... it won't be home."

Lexa turned her head and kissed her softly. "Shh," she whispered. "You're supposed to be sleeping." But there was a smile in her voice, and Clarke knew that if she wanted or needed to talk, Lexa would listen. 

"Maybe I don't want to sleep," Clarke said.

"What do you want to do?" Lexa asked.

Clarke didn't answer. Not with words, anyway. And then, after, she did sleep, deep and dreamless, and when she woke up and looked at the clock she was confused, because it was way too light to be the middle of the night, and it took her a minute to realize that she had only slept for a little over an hour. It felt like much longer. 

Lexa was still asleep, and Clarke was careful not to wake her as she disentangled herself from the sheets and found her clothes, padding back out into the living room. She glanced out the front window to the driveway, but the only cars were hers and her mom's. Marcus was still out, and she breathed a sigh of relief. 

Her mother looked up from her book and smiled. "Hey there," she said. She patted the space next to her. "Why don't you come sit?"

A part of her rebelled, and she had to fight the urge to cross her arms, plant her feet, and refuse. But there was nothing useful in the gesture, and her mother was trying. Probably. She seemed to be, anyway. Unless what had happened at the diner wasn't a breakthrough but a fluke. Either way, Clarke had to at least try to meet her halfway, right? So she went and sat. 

"I think it's time we actually talked," her mother said. "Now that we've been given a little bit of a shove in the right direction." She smiled, but it was strained. 

"She's sorry," Clarke said, "if she upset you."

"She shouldn't be," Abby replied. "It was brave of her to speak up." 

Clarke nodded, not sure how to respond to that. There was a part of her that wanted to tell her mother, despite what they'd decided about not making any announcements. Then they could have that conversation instead of whatever her mom had decided they needed to talk about, because she would much rather talk about how amazing Lexa was than reopening years of old wounds, even if Lexa was right about needing to clean them before they could heal property. But she didn't get a chance, because her mom spoke up first.

"I'm sorry that this is all happening so fast," she said. "I'm sorry that you've been blindsided over and over again with things. It has never been my intention to do anything to hurt you, and I know that that's cold comfort, because it's obvious that I _have_ hurt you, and I'm sorry for that, too. We haven't been very good at communicating these past few years, and I think I let myself fall back on those patterns too many times, instead of trying to forge new ones. I've told myself too many times that you're an adult, and expected you to handle things as an adult would, but the fact is, you're still a child in many ways, and you're _my_ child always, and I need to remember that."

Clarke just let her talk, because she wasn't sure what, if anything, she was supposed to say. Maybe her mother just needed to get this all off her chest, and then it would be up to Clarke to decide whether she believed it, whether she accepted all of these apologies. 

"And the truth is," her mom continued, "and no one ever tells you this, and they should – you never really grow up. You get older, the way you think changes – expands in some ways, becomes more rigid in others – and it's not the same for everyone, of course. You develop new skills, you form new relationships, the space you occupy in the world changes, and is always changing. But you never really grow up. You never really hit a point where you feel like an adult. You're still who you were when you were eight, and eighteen, and twenty-eight. You still find yourself looking for someone else older, more experienced, more capable to help you when you run up against something that makes you feel like you're in over your head. When I had you, I had my mom around to help me through it. This time..." She laid her hand on her stomach, sighed. "This time, I don't have that, and I still wish I did. Marcus has been amazing, and I hope that at some point you two can make peace with each other, but... he's not your Nana. And it made me wonder if that's how you feel, like you've suddenly been thrust out into the world on your own, and orphaned at the same time, even though I'm still alive."

Clarke wiped hastily at her eyes, not wanting her mother to see her tears. Because that was _exactly_ how it felt. She knew that Octavia and Raven both thought that she was lucky to have a mother who was still around and still cared, and who was stable enough that she didn't have to play the role of the parent more often than not, but it didn't really feel that way lately. There had been so many times when she'd just wanted to call her, to hear her voice and be reassured that everything was going to be okay, even if it was a hollow promise. 

And yes, her mother had stepped up when it really mattered, had been with her when she went to the police about Finn. But did that negate everything else? Or were all of the times that things had gone sideways her own fault? If she'd given her mother the chance, would she have been there more? 

She couldn't change the past. She could only move forward. 

"It feels like you're replacing me," Clarke said. "And Dad. You had a family, and it didn't work out, so now you're just going to start over with a new one."

Abby sighed. "Oh Clarke," she said. "It's not like that."

"It _feels_ like that."

"Would you—" Abby stopped herself. "I'm sorry," she said. "Again, that was never my intention. I honestly never planned on this." She gestured to her belly. "I didn't actually think it was possible at this point." She smiled wryly. "I should have known better. I'm a doctor. But... hindsight is 20/20, right?" She shook her head. "This baby is not going to replace you, Clarke. Nothing, no one ever could. She's going to be her own person, and I can only hope that she has at least some of your qualities. Because you're amazing. You've always been amazing, and I have no doubt that you always will be. But no matter how much like, or not like, you she is, she will never _be_ you." She reached out and took Clarke's hand, and Clarke let her. 

"I want you to be part of her life," she said. "I know it won't be a typical sibling relationship, with so many years between you, but I want her to know her sister. I don't want you to just be a picture on the mantle that she looks at and wonders who you are."

"I'm going to be busy with school," Clarke said. "And jobs and internships and all of that."

"I know," her mother said. "I know that. But I hope that you'll still find the time to get to know her. I know you maybe don't believe me, but it was hard for me, too, when your father died, and harder still when I felt you slipping away right along with him. I want to try to rebuild things, Clarke. I want to feel like a family again. I know it won't be easy, but I hope you haven't already decided it's impossible."

"I don't know," Clarke said, because that was the absolute honest truth. "I'll try."

"That's all I ask," Abby said. 

And then, almost like he had some kind of sixth sense that had kept him away until they'd had the chance to finish their conversation, or at least finish it as much as it was going to be finished at this point, Marcus came in, lugging bags of groceries. Clarke got up and went to help him put things away, because it was a gesture that she could make that didn't cost her anything, and maybe it would show her mother that she meant it when she said that she would try.

Lexa emerged from her room a couple of minutes later, her cheek marked with pillow creases, and Clarke couldn't help smiling. Lexa rolled her eyes and didn't resist when Clarke reached out and hooked her by her belt loops, pulling her closer. "Was I asleep for long?" she asked. 

"Not much longer than me," Clarke said. "I talked to my mom." Lexa raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to go on. "We're trying. I think."

"That's all you can do," Lexa said. Clarke watched her look around at the groceries that were still waiting to be put away, but Marcus had mysteriously disappeared not long after Lexa had appeared. "We should make them dinner."

"Uh... do we know how to cook?" Clarke asked. 

"Do you think I could live with Anya and not learn anything?" Lexa asked. "Come on. Pasta dishes aren't hard, as long as you have the right ingredients, and a little bit of imagination." She opened up the refrigerator. "We'll figure something out."

"If you say so," Clarke said. "You don't actually have to try to impress them."

"Maybe it's not them I'm trying to impress," Lexa said, smirking.

"You don't have to impress me, either," Clarke said. "You already have me." And she did. In all of this mess, in everything that had happened since Christmas, Lexa was the silver lining. Well, Raven too, but that was different. With all that she'd lost, or was losing – four walls and a floor and a ceiling, a box to hold memories in, her family as she had known it – she had, she thought – hoped – found her home.


	86. Lexa

Despite the fact that Lexa didn't actually have anything resembling a recipe, and the fact that Clarke was largely more of a hindrance than a help in the kitchen, dinner was not a disaster. Marcus had tried to insist that they were guests (which had made Clarke bristle more than a little, and he'd quickly amended it to 'only here for a few days') and that they didn't need to cook, but Lexa had managed to convince him that it was the least she – they – could do, and she didn't mind and she enjoyed it, really. Which was stretching the truth a little, and there had been several frantic text messages to Anya for guidance when things started to go awry, but in the end, they'd been able to sit down to a meal that did not suck.

Judging from the fact that Clarke and her mother no longer seemed to be at each other's throats or walking on eggshells around each other, whatever conversation Clarke and her mother had had seemed to have cleared the air between them. Or maybe they'd just both arrived at some kind of truce without actually dealing with any of the issues that had sparked the conflict in the first place. Lexa and her father had pretty much lived in that state for her entire senior year of high school – they had silently agreed to disagree when Lexa had started dating Costia, and that was that. But she hoped that they'd actually managed to at least start to work things out.

Conversation was cordial, if a bit stilted, but in the end Lexa was glad when Marcus offered to clear the table and do the dishes, partly because the kitchen was kind of a disaster area that she didn't want to deal with, and partly because it meant that they didn't have to make polite, awkward small talk. 

"Back to my room?" Clarke asked.

"You still haven't shown me the rest of the house," Lexa pointed out. 

"There's not really much to see," Clarke said, and to an extent she had a point. The house wasn't large; Lexa had to think that with her mother being a doctor and her father an engineer, Clarke's parents could have afforded a much larger home. But Clarke said they'd bought it when they were both still paying off their students loans, and they'd never really felt the need to upgrade, with three bedrooms and only one kid. But it wasn't the number of rooms that Lexa was interested in. It was the contents. It was getting her eyes (and hands) on all of the little things that had once been and maybe still were parts of Clarke, from the moment she was born until today. There was plenty to see – pieces of artwork framed and hung on the walls, both juvenilia and the more polished works from her high school art classes, certificates of achievement and ribbons and handprints pressed into clay, and lots of pictures. 

They finally ended up in the living room, and Clarke went to one of the shelves, pulling out several thick volumes. "Since I know that if I don't show you, you'll just find them yourself, or get Mom to tell you where they are," she said. She nudged her chin in the direction of a wide, comfy-looking chair and matching ottoman. "Sit there," she said.

Lexa did as she was told, and was a little surprised when Clarke wedged herself in beside her. It was wide enough for the two of them, but only because they didn't mind getting cozy with each other. Clarke set the albums on the ottoman and then dragged one into her lap, extending her legs out in front of her. Lexa did the same so that the pages could be spread across both their laps. A light came on behind them, and they both looked back to see Abby standing there. "If you need anything, let me know," she said, and then retreated to... somewhere else. Lexa wasn't sure where, but when Clarke flipped to the first page, she stopped caring, because this was Clarke – a tiny, red, screaming her head off baby Clarke, but Clarke nonetheless – and that warranted her undivided attention. 

They paged through infancy – first baths ("Why do people do that to their children? _Why?_ " Clarke asked, and Lexa pointing out that she wasn't seeing anything she hadn't seen before didn't make Clarke any less red) and first steps and first birthdays with cake mashed all over her face – to toddlerhood and school age, with school pictures and field trips and Halloween costumes and Clarke proudly brandishing a first prize ribbon for an elementary school art contest, and then one for the science fair. 

"I hope she was serious about letting me take some of these," Clarke said, as she pulled pictures from their slots, making a small pile on the arm of the chair.

"You can always scan them," Lexa said, "and either keep the digital copies yourself and get them reprinted, or send them to her to get them reprinted. Unless she has the negatives, in which case she can just do that anyway."

"Negatives?" Clarke asked.

Lexa closed her eyes, shaking her head in exaggerated sorrow. "Once upon a time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, pictures were taken on film, and you had to get them developed, unless you had a dark room and developed them yourself. This was done by exposing the film to certain chemicals, which fixed the images onto it. These were called negatives, because in them the parts that would be light when you actually turned them into prints were dark, and the parts that were dark appeared light. If you sent your pictures out to get prints made, they also gave you back the negatives, so that you could have more prints made in the future if you wished."

"Wow," Clarke said. "Sounds archaic."

"Completely," Lexa said. "Whippersnappers like you wouldn't remember ancient practices."

Clarke snorted. "And you do? You're not _that_ much older than me."

"Apparently I'm old enough," Lexa said. "Maybe I'm a vampire."

"Nah," Clarke said. "You don't sparkle in the sunlight." She grinned. 

"That depends on what makeup I'm wearing," Lexa said, and suppressed a laugh at the look on Clarke's face, like it hadn't ever even occurred to her that Lexa might wear makeup in the first place. Granted, it didn't happen that often, and Clarke had never seen her do it, but it wasn't like it was something that she _never_ did. She just hadn't had an occasion to. 

"Also, I'm done with the Edward Cullen School of Romance," Clarke said. "Been there, done that, didn't even get a t-shirt."

"Hoodies are better anyway," Lexa said. 

"Yeah," Clarke said. "They are." The fingers of her right hand slid into Lexa's left, and they laced together, palm to palm, and it felt good. It felt right. "Keep going," she said, nodding to the album. "I know you won't be happy until you've seen them all."

Lexa watched as, frame by frame, Clarke grew from a little girl into the person that was sitting beside her now. Clarke tried to rush her past the awkward middle school years, but Lexa wouldn't let herself be rushed. She took it all in, all of the grins and awards and family vacations... everything that was supposed to make up a childhood. 

Then she turned the page, and Clarke immediately put her hand over the pictures on it. "Can we just... skip a few?" she asked. "I don't even know why we have pictures of this. Who the fuck takes pictures at a funeral? Who wants to remember or relive that?"

Lexa just nodded, flipping past until they got to the last few pages, with prom and graduation, and the girl in those pictures was very different from the one in the ones leading up to it. Harder. More reserved. More... haunted. Lexa unlaced their hands and wrapped her arm around Clarke's shoulders, pulling her close. She didn't know what to say, so she didn't say anything. She just held her until Clarke's breathing, which had gone slightly ragged, eased. 

"Sorry," she said. "Sometimes..."

"I know," Lexa said. "Believe me."

Clarke rested her head on Lexa's shoulder, and they were quiet for a while as Clarke flipped back through, pulling out a few more shots to keep. Lexa put her finger on the image of a boy who appeared in so many of the pictures, even in some of the family shots. "Who's this?"

"That's Wells," Clarke said. "He was my best friend for most of my life. His parents were friends with my parents. He lost his mom, and then I lost my dad, and... I guess he thought that he could help me through it, because he'd been through it himself, but I didn't want sympathy, or empathy. I didn't want to be understood. I wanted to be angry. So... we kind of drifted apart."

"Where is he now?" Lexa asked.

"England," Clarke said. "He went to college in England."

"Have you talked to him at all?"

Clarke shrugged. "Not really."

"Do you want to?" 

"Yes and no," Clarke said. "Yes, because with more time and distance, more hindsight, I know that I was a jerk, and I know that I owe him an apology for treating him the way that I did, for using him as my punching bag, but I also know that he'll say that I don't owe him anything, and he'll just be so _understanding_ that it will make me feel worse."

"I don't know what I would have done without Anya," Lexa said. "Right after, and then after I came back from Australia. She... I tried to push her away, but she can be pretty immovable when she wants to be. But she was also really good at figuring out when I really just needed some time and space, and when I was wallowing, and needed to be dumped in a freezing shower fully clothed."

Clarke looked like she wasn't sure whether it was okay to laugh. "She really did that?"

Lexa nodded. "I didn't think she could. I thought there was no way she could lift me, especially with me going to great effort to be as dead a weight as possible. I was wrong."

"Why did she do that?"

"Because I was refusing to do even the bare minimum to take care of myself," Lexa said. "I wouldn't get out of bed, I wouldn't eat... I basically got up to go to the bathroom and that was it, and she decided it was time for me to get up and function. I wouldn't. I just wanted to sleep. I just wanted to close my eyes and... and finally she just got sick of it and picked me up and dumped me in the shower and turned it on until I finally said that I would actually _take_ a shower, and eat, and at least pretend to still be alive."

"This wasn't recently, though," Clarke said, and it wasn't a question exactly, but Lexa could hear the hesitation in her voice, the worry that maybe it was, and maybe she had gotten herself into something she wasn't prepared for. 

"No," Lexa said, twisting a strand of Clarke's hair around one finger and stroking it with her thumb. "This was when she came to check on me after Costia's funeral. Or, no. She came to check on me after Costia's funeral and I told her I was fine and I made her leave. But then she came back. Without telling me. She must have talked to my dad, and he must have told her that I hadn't left my bed in days, and she was having none of it." She smiled at Clarke, or at least forced her lips into a smiling shape, wanting to reassure her even as the memories picked away at the scar tissue of her heart. "She never would have let me get away with anything like that recently. That's kind of been one of the... I guess I shouldn't call it a _rule_ , but it kind of is... of me staying with her. I have to function. I have to rejoin the human race."

"Is that hard?" Clarke asked.

"Not nearly as hard as it used to be," Lexa said, and if she hadn't had the sense that maybe they weren't completely unobserved, she would have kissed Clarke, but the feeling of eyes on the back of her head wasn't one that was easy to shake, and yes, they'd decided that they weren't going to hide anything, but she still wasn't big on public displays of affection. When you were queer, it sort of became instinct to avoid them, if you had any sense of self-preservation at all.

"I'm glad," Clarke said. She closed the album and shifted it off their laps, pulling her knees up so that she was curled half into Lexa's lap. "When do I get to see baby you?" she asked. 

"Never," Lexa said. 

"What?" Clarke scowled at her, but Lexa could see the smile in her eyes. "That's not fair!"

"Fair doesn't have anything to do with it," Lexa said. "Didn't your parents ever tell you that life isn't fair?"

"All the time," Clarke said. "But I showed you mine!" Lexa raised an eyebrow, and Clarke rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Do I? Why don't you explain it to me, just in case?" Lexa teased, wanting to draw out the moment, to not take the light from Clarke's eyes. 

"Why won't you let me see baby pictures of you?" Clarke asked. 

"It's not that I won't let you," Lexa said, her free hand resting on Clarke's forearm, playing with the material of her shirt as she avoided looking her in the eye. "It's that I can't."

Clarke tipped Lexa's chip up, catching and holding her gaze. "Why not?"

She tried to smile, to hide the fact that just how fractured her childhood memories were suddenly stung more than it ever had before. "I don't know where the pictures of me when I was a baby are," Lexa admitted. "In storage somewhere, maybe, or at my grandparents' house. Or maybe gone, if he decided to just destroy all traces of her." 

"Your mom?" Clarke asked. "Would your dad actually do that?"

"I don't know," Lexa said. "He basically just walked out of my life for more than half a year, and when he came back, it was just the two of us, and we didn't talk about my mother. It was pretty much as if she'd never existed. Maybe he thought that was the best way to deal with it. Maybe it was the only way. I don't know. But when you're moving from country to country, you don't take much with you, and photo albums and scrapbooks are heavy. So... I don't know where they are. And even if I had them, it would only get you up to when I was eight. After that... pictures just don't exist."

A line formed between Clarke's brows as she frowned. "Why not?"

"He didn't take any," Lexa said. "It was never his thing. He never thought about it. I might have taken a few pictures of myself using a mirror or something at some point, but..." She lifted her shoulders, let them fall. "From age eight to my senior year of high school, there's nothing."

Clarke looked at her, a mix of horror and sorrow in her eyes, and finally Lexa had to look away. "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters!" Clarke said. "A person should have a past!"

"I do. I have plenty of pictures I've taken of the places we've lived."

"But you're not in them! It's like... life happened around you and you weren't part of it."

The words might as well have been a slap to the face and a knife in the gut. Lexa knew that Clarke hadn't said them to hurt her; Clarke would never do anything to intentionally cause her pain. But the truth hurt, and this was the most brutal truth she'd heard in a long time.

She pulled her phone out of her pocket and turned on the camera, switching it to the front-facing one so she could see what she was doing. She'd never quite figured out the whole art of the selfie, but Clarke was right, and she was done with living outside of her own life. So even if the picture was a little crooked and fuzzy around the edges, she took it, because this moment was one she didn't want to forget, even if it didn't mean anything to anyone but her.

Later, when they were getting ready for bed, Marcus stopped her in the hall. "Are you sure you don't want us to make space in the guest room?" he asked. "It's really no trouble."

"Why?" Lexa asked, because even though Clarke was sure that it wouldn't be an issue with her mom if the figured out that the two of them were together, Marcus was an unknown variable. Lexa didn't like unsolved equations.

"We just want you to be comfortable," Marcus said.

"I am," Lexa said. "The only place I want to be is with Clarke." 

She left him in the hall, blinking as realization dawned, deciding that whatever reaction he was going to have, whatever fallout there might be, would wait for morning.


	87. Clarke

"I'm not going to have any secrets left by the time we're done with this," Clarke grumbled. "You're literally watching me sift through my past to decide what is worth keeping and what can get thrown away."

"You're not throwing away your past," Lexa said, her tone patient but long-suffering, and Clarke got it. She did. Listening to someone angst about something for an extended period of time, saying the same reassuring things over and over again, was exhausting. She wondered when Lexa would stop trying and just tell her to get the fuck over herself already. She kind of wished that she would. 

"I know," Clarke said. "I know. I'm sorry."

Lexa sighed. "You don't have to be sorry, Clarke," she said. "I'm not looking for an apology."

"Then what are you looking for?" Clarke asked. She held up a journal from some earlier part of her life – she wasn't sure when but she'd apparently been very into stickers at the time, so it had to be fairly old – and wiggled it. "Blackmail material?"

Lexa quirked a smile, and caught the little book when Clarke tossed it to her. She flipped open to the first page (which was pink, but later pages were green, blue, purple...) and scanned the words scrawled there. "Wow," she said. "You really _were_ destined to become a doctor."

Clarke cocked her head. "What? Why?"

"Your penmanship is _terrible_." Lexa grinned.

"No one knows how to teach left-handed people how to write!" Clarke protested. "And when you're little and they have you do everything in pencil, it's a disaster because you end up with graphite smeared all down your hand, so you end up contorting yourself to avoid that. It's much better _now_."

"Suuuure it is," Lexa drawled. "Also, who is Ben and should I be jealous?"

"I have no idea," Clarke said, "so I'm going to have to go with 'no' on that one. Why? What did I write?"

"'Ben has the prettiest eyes I've ever seen,'" Lexa read. 

"That's it?" Clarke asked.

"There's a drawing, too."

Clarke groaned. "How bad is it?" 

"Not as bad as the decidedly lopsided unisus? pegacorn? on the next page," Lexa said. "A for effort, though."

"Let me see!" Clarke flopped down next to her and took the journal back, laughing at her early attempts at drawing portraits and animals. She still didn't remember who Ben was, but her guess was that the journal was from around age eight or nine. "Just wait until we find the one where I was drawing _just_ eyes," she said. "Because a page filled with disembodied eyeballs isn't creepy _at all_."

"I can hardly contain my excitement," Lexa replied, deadpan, and then laughed as she had to dodge Clarke faking a jab into her side. They tussled for a minute, ending up sprawled tangled together amidst the piles of stuff spread over the floor in vaguely organized chaos. 

"Thank you for coming," Clarke said. She'd lost track of how many times she'd already said it, but it bore repeating. This wasn't easy, but it was better not having to do it alone, or worse, with her mother attempting to help. 

"Thank you for having me," Lexa replied. "Now can you get your elbow off my hair?" 

Clarke sat up. "I'm going to go get some boxes," she said. "Be right back."

Lexa nodded, picking up a random pile of papers and sifting through. Clarke had no idea what they might be or what she might find, but despite her earlier protests, she didn't actually mind the possibility of Lexa knowing all of her secrets... such as they were. She wasn't exactly a woman of mystery most of the time as it was. 

Her mother was in the living room, doing some sorting and packing of her own. She looked up and smiled at Clarke. "How is it going in there?" she asked.

"Lexa apparently fancies herself an art critic," Clarke said, smiling back. "I just came out for some boxes. And a garbage bag, I guess, for the stuff that doesn't need to be saved for posterity." 

"Boxes are in the hall, you know where garbage bags are kept." 

Clarke nodded. She looked around the living room, her eyes landing on the chair that she and Lexa had shared the night before. It had been her father's chair, the one he'd always sat in at the end of the day, and for a long time – probably past the age where most girls would have stopped, because it was too babyish or embarrassing – Clarke had wedged herself in beside him when she was having a bad day. He'd always known just what to say... and when to say nothing at all... to make her feel better.

"What's happening with the furniture?" she asked. 

"Some of it we're taking with us," her mom said. "Some of it we're leaving for Jackson, if he wants it. Anything else, we're donating."

"I want Dad's chair," Clarke said. 

Her mother frowned. "Where are you going to put it?" she asked. 

"And the ottoman," Clarke said. "I don't know yet. But I want them."

"All right," Abby said. "We'll figure something out, then."

Clarke retreated to her room, and wrapped her arms around Lexa, pulling her back into her chest and holding her tight.

She was soft in Clarke's arms, yielding, surrendering to being whatever Clarke needed her to be in that moment, and Clarke wondered how hard that was for her, or how easy. It hadn't been easy as first, she knew, for Lexa to let down her guard, but now...? 

"What can I do?" Lexa asked. "How can I help?"

Clarke didn't answer right away, because in this moment, Lexa being there, being willing to help, was enough. She didn't know what else she wanted or needed from her, except knowing that she was there, and that she wasn't going anywhere. That the past was being packed into boxes, the present was filled with change, but the future... 

"Do you know of anywhere to store a giant chair and ottoman?" Clarke asked, half-joking. "I want to keep my dad's chair, but it won't exactly fit in a dorm room. I guess it will probably go into storage; maybe Mom can keep it in their garage or basement or something... if they have a garage or basement."

"I'll ask Anya," Lexa said. 

"Ask Anya what?"

"If there's room at our place."

Clarke blinked, adjusting her embrace so that she could look at Lexa, forehead furrowed in confusion and disbelief. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that if she thinks we have room in our living room, maybe you can store it at our place until w—until you have your own," Lexa said. "As long as you don't mind if other people sit in it. It would be a little strange to have a big comfy chair in the room that people weren't allowed to sit in."

"I wouldn't mind," Clarke said, although a little pang of discomfort had pricked at her heart at the idea that strangers might occupy the space that her father once had. "You would do that?"

Lexa looked at her, and Clarke knew what she was going to say without her having to say it: 'I don't say things I don't mean.' But her expression was soft, and there was so much gentleness in her, so much compassion, and it made Clarke's throat ache, thinking about how life, the world, circumstance, fate, whatever you wanted to call it, had tried to take that away from her. What purpose would that have served? What good would it have done to strip a little more kindness from the world when there was already so little of it, or so it seemed when you read the paper and watched the nightly news?

"I'll text her now," Lexa said. "We'll have to measure it to make sure it will fit, of course, and she's not home to check, but does it need to happen this weekend?"

Clarke shook her head. "I think their plan is to be moved into their new place by the beginning of May, which should give them a month to get settled in before the baby is born. So we still have time."

"We'll figure something out," Lexa said, and Clarke believed her, because when Lexa wanted something, she got it. It was just the kind of person that she was. 

It wasn't until that night, when Lexa had fallen asleep, her body pressed into the curve of Clarke's, their fingers laced together and pressed over Lexa's heart as her mind wandered back over the day that she realized the slip that Lexa had made. She'd started to say 'we'. She'd started to say, 'When we have our own place,' but she'd stopped and amended 'we' to 'you'.

Clarke hugged her tighter, pressed her lips to the back of her neck, felt Lexa sigh and stir and settle again. She closed her eyes, breathed her in, and fell asleep with her mind still reeling with possibility.

The downside to sharing a bed with Lexa, Clarke discovered, was that Lexa's internal alarm clock was a little too good. She woke up early whether she needed to or not, and Clarke was sure that she _tried_ to keep still, but it wasn't really her natural state, was it? So eventually her tiny shifts and twitches woke Clarke, too... at quarter after six in the morning. On a weekend. A holiday, even. 

"You don't have an off switch, do you?" Clarke grumbled. She loosened her arms to allow Lexa to roll over and face her.

"Good morning, Clarke," Lexa said, with the kind of smile that would have made Clarke hate her if it didn't make her love her so damn much. 

"Good morning, Lexa," she grumbled, but no bad mood could last long when someone kissed you like that, and when she pulled away, Clarke smiled back, threading her fingers through Lexa's hair to push it back from her face. "Happy Zombie Chocolate Bunny Day."

Lexa snorted. "If you say so."

"Isn't that what today is about? Chocolate bunnies rising from the grave?" Clarke grinned at her, stroking her thumb over the soft hair at her temple. 

"You're ridiculous," Lexa said, but it really meant 'I love you' and they both knew it. "Would it – do you mind if I go for a run?"

"Are you going to make me go with you?" Clarke asked.

"Only if you want to," Lexa said. "I'm pretty good at not getting lost, even when I don't know a place. And I have your address and GPS on my phone if I do."

"You don't need my permission," Clarke said. 

"I didn't ask for your permission," Lexa said. "I asked if you would mind." 

"I don't mind," Clarke said, even though she knew that going back to sleep wasn't going to happen, and that even staying in bed would feel sad and lonely once Lexa got up. "Do you want to take my keys?"

"Is it a problem if I just leave the door unlocked?" Lexa asked.

"No," Clarke said. 

"One less thing to carry, then," Lexa said. She kissed Clarke softly, then unwound herself from the blankets and got up, grabbing clothing from her suitcase before padding across the hall to the bathroom. A few minutes late Clarke heard the front door open then close, and she shifted into the warm spot that Lexa had left behind, pressed her nose into the pillow, wrapped herself up in the lingering traces of her...

... and realized that there was no stepping back from this ledge now. That maybe she wasn't even teetering on the edge anymore, maybe she'd already fallen, and she wondered if she was still falling, if she would ever stop falling, and when she did, whether there would be something to cushion the landing or whether she would end up smashed on the rocks.

Her stomach clenched. How could she think about losing her, when she'd only just found her? She got up then, going back to packing because it was something else to think about, even if it didn't entirely push her thoughts away from how fragile life was. 

_I can't lose her,_ Clarke thought, jamming a fistful of papers that had outlived their usefulness into the giant garbage bag that was already half full with the detritus of her childhood. _I won't._

Lexa was gone for about half an hour, maybe 45 minutes, and when she came back she went to take a shower. Clarke was still in her pajamas when they wandered to the kitchen to get breakfast. Her mother was standing at the counter, her hands wrapped around a mug, breathing in the steam. She set it down to pour one for Clarke.

"I thought you weren't supposed to have coffee while you were pregnant," Clarke said, accepting the cup. "Please tell me this isn't decaf."

"Studies vary," her mom said. "I let myself have one cup. It doesn't do the baby any good for me to be stressed out from caffeine withdrawal."

Clarke nodded. "Do we have any tea?" she asked. 

"Maybe some tea bags from making iced tea at one point?" Abby frowned. "I'm not sure."

Clarke rummaged through the cabinets, emerging with a packet in hand which she brandished triumphantly. "Even better," she said. "Cocoa."

"It's fine," Lexa said. "I'm all right."

"I'm making you cocoa," Clarke said. "If you can't have your daily dose of boiled twigs, you can at least have some Dementor-repellant."

"You've been talking to Anya too much," Lexa said. 

Clarke just grinned and went to the refrigerator for milk, pouring some into a measuring cup and popping it into the microwave. A few minutes later, Lexa had cocoa, and Clarke had mocha, having mixed some of the powder into her coffee.

"Why don't you take that to the living room?" Abby suggested, and when Clarke looked at her (because her mother had always hated when she took food out of the kitchen or dining room, because she didn't always remember to bring the dishes back, and there were often crumbs) she just shrugged and smiled. "Go ahead."

So they went, Clarke heading immediately for her father's chair because it was hers now, and stopped when she saw what was in it. Two Easter baskets overflowing with gifts, one with a blue bow and one with green. She looked at Lexa, who had stopped half a step behind her, just in time to see her hastily brush a tear from her cheek.


	88. Lexa

Lexa wiped away that tear that slid down her cheek quickly, but she knew that Clarke had seen it. Clarke shifted, ready to move toward her, but Lexa shook her head just slightly. She was all right, and she didn't want any more attention called to it than there needed to be. She didn't want Clarke's mother to think that she'd upset her somehow when she'd obviously gone above and beyond to do something nice. And she _wasn't_ upset... just overwhelmed. It had been a very long time since anyone had bothered to make a fuss over a holiday on her behalf. Hell, she'd spent this past Christmas on an airplane. (Intentionally, but still.) She had vague memories of Easter baskets when she was very young, when her mother was still alive, but after that, the holiday had just become like any other Sunday.

"Come on," Clarke encouraged her, reaching out to hook one finger through Lexa's and draw her closer. "Let's see what we have."

Lexa complied, obedient because she didn't know what else to do. She was trying very hard not to make too many waves, and to reject this gesture would almost certainly do so. It was strange, being in a position where she was actually putting effort into getting people to like her; normally she didn't care, or said that she didn't. (It depended on the company whether she truly didn't or not.) 

The baskets were overflowing, and a quick look told Lexa that it wasn't because they'd been filled up with that fake plastic grass that got everywhere, and could turn up in houses years later, even though none had ever been intentionally brought in. There was no filler at all; the baskets were jammed with _stuff_. There was plenty of candy (which she would share with Anya, and keep on hand for that time of the month when chocolate was the only thing that kept her from becoming an absolute raging monster some days) but there was a lot of other things, too. 

"I had to guess at what sort of bath stuff you might like," Abby said, sitting down on the couch and watching them. "I know what Clarke likes, but I didn't know if there were certain scents that you favored."

Lexa unscrewed the cap of the little bottle of body wash and was hit by a wave of citrus. She smiled – not despite herself, exactly, but she wasn't faking anything either – and nodded. "This is good," she said. 

"You didn't seem like a floral kind of girl," Abby replied, smiling back. "I went with mostly citrus or a little bit earthy. Clarke likes things that smell like food."

"Hey!" Clarke protested. "I resemble that remark!" She winked at Lexa. 

"'I'll eat you up, I love you so,'" Lexa said, the words out before she could consider how they would land, not with Clarke but with her mother, and Marcus, whether they would know that it was a quote from a book, whether they would realize that she'd changed it from 'we' to 'I' without thinking, whether they had already figured things out. There had been no reaction the next morning, after what she'd said to Marcus the first night, no backlash of any kind, so either they were oblivious or Clarke had been right and her mother really would be okay with them, or at least any objections she had wouldn't be because of anatomy.

She glanced at Clarke, who was looking at her mother, and they both searched for some kind of reaction. Abby just smiled back at them. "I wonder if we still have that in the house, or if we'll have to buy it new," she said. "It's been a long time; I have to remember what books I didn't mind reading a thousand times."

"I made my mother read 'One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish' so many times she had it memorized, apparently," Lexa said. "'This one has a little car. This one has a little star. My, what a lot of fish there are.'"

"Dr. Suess is always good," Abby agreed. "Anything else you remember?"

"I loved all of the Sandra Boynton books," Clarke said. 

"Yes. The board books will need to be replaced, though. Speaking of eating things up because you love them so."

Clarke laughed. "I was a baby! That's what babies do!"

"There's one I _still_ read sometimes," Lexa admitted, feeling heat rush to her cheeks. "On bad days. Or I quote it, anyway."

"What's that?" Abby asked. 

"'Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.'"

"Yes!" Abby laughed. "'Mom says some days are like that. Even in Australia.'"

"Mom's not wrong," Lexa said. "I know. I've been." She felt the edges of her smile go brittle, and felt Clarke lean in a little closer, offering silent support. She wanted nothing more than to lean in to her, feel Clarke's arms around her, and just forget everything for a moment or two, but she couldn't. Not here, not now. So she turned her attention back to the contents of her basket. A Moleskine notebook and colored gel pens like she used for keeping her life in order – Abby must have noticed her writing in one at one point. A pair of earbuds. ('You can never have too many, with the rate that they break or disappear.') An Amazon gift card for more money than it seemed like one should or would offer to a friend of your daughter's who you'd just met a few days ago. A set of pajamas, the pants of which were printed all over with surfboards, because Hawai'i had come up in conversation at some point.

Clarke grinned when she saw them, and the puzzled look on Lexa's face. "Family tradition," she said. "When I was really little, the entire family would get matching pajamas for Christmas and Easter, but as I got older that stopped, but it was still tradition that I would get new ones every year." She held up her own, which were a blue-green print of the galaxy. 

"Thank you," Lexa said, looking at Clarke's mother. "You didn't have to do all this."

"It would have been pretty rude of me to do it for Clarke and not for you," Abby said. "You're welcome."

"Are we going out for brunch?" Clarke asked. "Or was it later in the day?"

"Later," her mother answered. "If you're hungry, you'll have to make breakfast."

"I'm on it," Marcus said. "Pancakes sound good to everyone?"

"Pancakes are perfect," Abby replied, and Lexa nodded. 

After a second, Clarke did too. "Do I have time to take a quick shower?" she asked.

"I think so," Marcus said. "I'll just keep everything warm in the oven if I need to."

"Thanks." She got up and headed for the bathroom, and Lexa followed because sitting there with Clarke's mother wasn't exactly high on her list of things she wanted to do right now. She didn't follow her into the bathroom itself, opting to hide in Clarke's room instead. When she heard the water start running, she pulled out her phone and scrolled through her (pathetically short) list of contacts, all the way down to the W's. (And what did it say that she had her father listed in her phone under his full name, rather than as Dad like a normal person?) 

She tapped on it quickly, before she could lose the nerve. It rang several times, and then went to voicemail, and she realized suddenly that with the difference in time zones, she was probably calling at an ungodly hour. But she came by her own propensity for rising early honestly, so maybe he was already up anyway. A life in the military tended to do that to people. 

"Hey Dad," she said, when his voicemail picked up. "It's me. Lexa." As if he wouldn't know that based on the fact that she'd called him Dad, unless he had some other secret family, some other daughter, hidden away somewhere, but that was the stuff of Lifetime movies, and not her actual real life. "I was just calling to w—I was just calling to see how you are. I know it's been a while. Maybe An—" She stopped herself as she felt bitterness creep into her tone. She swallowed it and started over. "Anyway, call back if you w—if you get a chance." She hesitated, not sure if she should say more, or if she wanted to. Finally she just hung up, and shoved her phone back into her pocket. 

She smoothed Clarke's sheets, tugging them back into place, tucking them in around the edges, then pulling the blankets up over and arranging the pillows at the head. Old habits die hard, and she'd never actually tried to kill this one. She liked having her room neat, and if this wasn't her room exactly, it was still the room she was staying in, and having the bed made helped calm her rattled nerves. She didn't know if her father would call, and if he did, she didn't know what she would say to him. Pathetic as it was, she'd pretty much said everything she could think of to say in the message she'd left. Everything she could think of that she was _allowed_ to say, anyway. There were plenty of things that she would like to say to her father that she never would.

Clarke emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, and Lexa let herself forget about her father and whether he really deserved that title. Once Clarke was dressed, they went out to see about pancakes... and laughed when they saw that Marcus had decided to make them into the shapes of bunnies, with blueberries and chocolate chips to make their faces.

"You're going to be a good father," Clarke told Marcus, and for a second everyone was stunned – Clarke included – because it was pretty much the first nice thing she'd said to him all weekend, and possibly the first really positive thing she'd said about the imminent arrival of her younger sibling. 

"I certainly hope so," Marcus said. "But I'll definitely keep bunny pancakes in the playbook." He smiled, and Clarke actually smiled back, and Lexa's insides clenched in a way that made it impossible to swallow the bite she'd been chewing for a minute. She ought to be happy that they were getting along, that maybe they would all be able to get through the day without any drama, but mostly it just made her think about all of the holidays that had gone by unnoticed, or at least unremarked on. Christmas and her birthday – conveniently almost exactly six months apart – had been the only things that her father had paid any attention to, and even then it wasn't on any kind of extravagant level. No bouncy castles or tea parties or whatever it was that kids did to celebrate when she was little, no sweet sixteen when she was older. But he'd always gotten the day off, no matter what he was doing and where they were, and they'd done _something_ together. The trouble was that she hadn't _wanted_ to just be doing something with him, she wanted to do something with her _friends_ , but she didn't _have_ friends, and even if she had, they wouldn't have been welcome in their house, and her father wasn't about to chaperone a bunch of hyperactive children. 

"Hey," Clarke said softly, reaching under the table to squeeze Lexa's knee. "You okay?"

Lexa shook her head, then realized that Clarke might take that as a no, and forced a smile. "I'm fine," she lied, and hated herself for it, but it was a necessary lie in the here and now. Clarke's eyes narrowed slightly, and her jaw tightened, but she didn't call her on it. She just squeezed her knee again, and let go. 

Back in Clarke's room, she waited for her to demand the truth, to admit that she'd lied about being okay, braced herself for anger or disappointment or whatever emotion was going to be leveled at her, determined to stay numb to whatever came, because she just couldn't. She couldn't. Not if she still had to play the role of perfect guest through some sort of fancy meal. 

But it didn't come. Instead Clarke flopped down on the bed and held out her arms to Lexa, flapping her hands at her when she didn't immediately come over, not stopping until Lexa was settled next to her, curled into the embrace, her ear against her chest so that she could hear her heart. 

"Holidays suck," Clarke declared, and the words vibrated through Lexa's skull. "Even when they don't suck, they suck."

Lexa almost laughed, although it came out more of a rush of air from her nose, not quite a snort. "Yes," she agreed. "They do."

And that was all the said about it. Eventually, Clarke's mother came to let them know that they needed to leave in about half an hour, so they might want to start getting ready. Lexa grabbed the garment bag from the closet where she'd hung it and headed for the bathroom.

"You're seriously going to go change in there?" Clarke asked. "I've seen it all before, Lexa."

"No," Lexa said. "You haven't." She closed the door and fished around in her toiletry bag until she found the various tubes and compacts that would transform her into... well, into herself, really, only just a little more so. She leaned against the counter, examining her face in the mirror, trying to remember the last time she'd bothered with any of this. It seemed like a lifetime ago... and it might as well have been. It was over a year, in any case, because she never had when she was in Australia. Sunscreen and lip balm had pretty much been the entirety of her beauty routine. Maybe when she'd taken Costia out for dinner for their anniversary?

She shook the memory of that night from her head. Not because it was a bad one, but because it had no place here. Instead, she thought about the new memories she was making, about how maybe someday she and Clarke would laugh about the weekend they spent with her mother and her mother's... whatever he was... and how maybe there might have been a less dramatic way for Lexa to meet them for the first time.

A touch of color here, a bit of shimmer there, and a thorough brushing of her hair to tame it into manageable waves later, Lexa slipped into the outfit she'd decided on as dressy but not over the top, and opened the bathroom door. 

Clarke opened her bedroom door at the same time, and they stood for a moment, just looking each other up and down, and then Clarke's jaw dropped. "Holy shit," she breathed. "You're beautiful."


	89. Clarke

"There's no need to sound so shocked," Lexa said, and for a second Clarke thought she was actually offended, until she saw the way that the corner of her mouth twitched as she fought a smile. 

"I thought you were kidding about makeup," Clarke said. She couldn't take her eyes off of Lexa's face, the way that silvery shadow brought out the color of her eyes, the faint shimmer of the gloss on her lips… She swallowed hard, shaking her head. 

"Why?" Lexa asked. "Don't tell me you've fallen for the stereotypes too. Not all lesbians have short hair, drive Subarus, and wear flannel."

"I know," Clarke said, feeling suddenly awkward because maybe she _had_ bought into the stereotypes to some extent, even though Lexa didn't fit them (well, she might have worn flannel once or twice), and suddenly faced with it, she didn't know what to do or say. Part of it was just the word. Lesbian. She wasn't a label; she was just Lexa. 

She wasn't _just_ anything, and maybe that was the problem. Maybe Clarke had subconsciously tried to fit her into boxes, package her up to make her make sense and every time she thought she had her pinned down, Lexa did something that challenged those ideas. 

Like put on makeup and dressy clothes and reveal herself to be absolutely, inarguably, stunning. 

"It could have been worse," Lexa said, shutting off the bathroom light and stepping into the hall.

"How?" Clarke asked. 

"I could have worn heels," Lexa said. "You might have actually fainted."

"Would you have caught me if I did?" Clarke asked. 

"Of course," Lexa said. "What kind of superhero would I be if I didn't?" 

"Then I wish you had," Clarke said. 

"I suppose you could always pretend," Lexa said. "But you're not really the damsel in distress type."

"I try not to be," Clarke said. But Lexa had rescued her once – more than once – and it seemed impossible that it could only have been two months (give or take) since Lexa had gotten between her and Finn outside the dining hall and Clarke had teased her about her superhero alter ego and her tragic backstory. She hadn't known, of course, how close to the mark she was hitting.

Clarke wasn't the same person she had been. Neither was Lexa. The girl that stood in front of her was not the somber, unsmiling girl that Clarke had met. Clarke didn't know what she had been like before that, before Costia's death had torn up her heart, so she didn't know if she was getting back to the person she'd been, or if she was someone else again with Clarke. But she seemed happier, and that was something, wasn't it? 

"You're beautiful too," Lexa said. 

"Thank you." Clarke reached out and took her hand, bringing it to her lips and kissing her knuckles, then wiping away the smudge of lipstick left behind with her thumb. "I guess we should go find the old people, let them know we're ready."

Lexa laughed. "I guess so."

Her mother was the last one ready, but then it probably took longer to do everything when you were hauling around a roughly twenty pound beach ball in your gut. When she finally came into the living room, she broke into a smile. "Look at you," she said. "Did you plan this?"

Clarke looked at Lexa and had to laugh. Somehow she hadn't noticed the fact that they were both in black and white – Clarke's top was black, her skirt a black and white print, and Lexa's shirt was white with black trim, and black capris, or highwaters, or whatever it was when a pair of pants didn't quite reach the ankle – and it probably _did_ look like they'd planned it.

"Great minds think alike," Marcus said.

"Let me get a picture," her mom said. 

"This isn't prom," Clarke protested, rolling her eyes. 

"Let her," Lexa said softly, and how could Clarke say no then? So she got up and let her mother arrange them in front of the mantle, wrapping her arm around Lexa's waist, feeling Lexa's hand resting lightly on her hip, and with Clarke's heels they were almost the same height. She looked over at Lexa and smiled, and the camera flashed, and when her mother was satisfied and turning to head for the door, she stole a quick kiss. 

They climbed into the back seat of Marcus's car, and the ride to the restaurant was mostly quiet. When they arrived, they were taken almost immediately to a table, and set loose on the buffet. 

For a little while, they were all quiet as they ate. The food was good, but Clarke couldn't help noticing that Lexa seemed to spend more time pushing hers around her plate than actually eating, and she worried that her mother would notice too and start to ask questions. Even if the questions might need to be asked, Clarke didn't want it to be her mother doing it, and especially not here and now. The last thing she wanted was for Lexa to be put on the spot and made to feel awkward or obligated to fake her way through this when whatever was bothering her probably (hopefully) had nothing to do with the actual immediate situation.

So she decided to bring up the subject that could distract any new or expectant parent – the baby. "Have you decided what you're going to call her?" she asked, after swallowing a bite of ham. 

"We have," her mother said, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she smiled at Clarke, and maybe she'd intended it as a distraction to keep attention off of Lexa, but it had definitely won her some brownie points with Mom as well, and probably the more of those she could build up, the better. "Vera Louise." 

"Vera?" Clarke asked, trying not to wrinkle her nose. 

"For my mother," Marcus said.

"And Louise for your Grammy Lou," Abby added.

"But she's—" Clarke frowned, not understanding but not sure she should ask. 

"Your father's mother?" Abby finished for her. "I know. She was also a huge help when you were little, and even after everything, she's kept in touch with me. She's excited about the fact that she's going to have another granddaughter to spoil. As far as she's concerned, blood has nothing to do with family, and I dare you or anyone else to tell her otherwise."

Clarke couldn't help smiling. "That sounds like her." She turned the name over in her head and decided it wasn't so bad. But there was still one big question, and probably no polite way to ask it, and she didn't really want to wreck any goodwill she'd bought herself by asking it impolitely. 

The silence stretched a little too long, and finally her mother's eyes narrowed. "Whatever you're thinking, just go ahead and say it," she said. 

"I just wondered if she's going to be a Kane, or a Griffin, or what," Clarke said. 

"Kane-Griffin," Marcus said. "And yes, I know that usually it would be the other way around, but we decided that Kane-Griffin sounded better, and anyway, your mother's done most of the work up to this point, so it seems only fair." He smiled. 

Clarke couldn't help it. It made her like him more, that he wasn't pulling the usual macho legacy bullshit about the name of his child. 

"I have both of my parents' names," Lexa chimed in. "My middle name is my mother's maiden name."

"What's that?" Abby asked.

"Chandler."

"Speaking of names – is Lexa short for something?" Marcus asked.

"Yes and no," Lexa said. "It's short for Alexandria, which is somehow significant to my parents although I'm honestly not sure how, but my mother wanted me to be called Lexa, and she didn't want to take a chance on me somehow ending up with a different nickname, so they decided that they would just name me Lexa."

"I bet you get asked that a lot," Abby said. 

Lexa shrugged. "I would rather have people ask than assume. I had one teacher who refused to allow anyone to use a nickname, and for six months I was Alexandra. It didn't matter that all of my school paperwork said that my name was Lexa; she refused to believe it. And she didn't even get the imaginary long form of my name right."

"Didn't your parents say anything?" Abby asked, appalled.

"My mother was dead. Is dead. My father…" Her lips twisted. "He was busy, I guess. And what's a name when you've already lost everything else? It wasn't worth fighting over."

"Oh honey," Abby said, "I'm so sorry."

"Thank you," Lexa said softly, looking down, having exposed more of herself than she had intended, maybe. Probably. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bring everyone down."

"You didn't," Abby told her.

"Excuse me," Lexa said, standing up without actually waiting to be excused and heading for the discreet sign that pointed the way to restrooms.

A moment of silence, and then Clarke's mother looked at her expectantly. "Aren't you going to go make sure that she's all right?" she asked. 

"Maybe she just wants a minute to herself," Clarke said. 

"Then let her tell you that."

It was pointless to argue, and anyway, her mom was right. Clarke got up and went.

Lexa stood in front of the bank of sinks, staring at herself in the mirror. She didn't look when Clarke's heels clacked on the tile floor, so Clarke came up behind her and wrapped her arms around her waist, propping her chin on Lexa's shoulder. Their eyes met through the mirror, and Clarke felt Lexa sag back against her slightly. "You want to talk about it?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa shook her head. 

"Okay," Clarke said. She pressed a kiss to the curve of Lexa's neck. "You just want to stay here for a minute?" A nod. "Do you want me to stay with you?" Another nod, so Clarke stayed where she was, even when the bathroom door opened again, and even when the woman who came in clutching the hand of a little girl stopped dead, staring at them.

"Do you people have no shame?" she demanded. "There are _children_ here."

Clarke felt Lexa stiffen, and she wasn't sure if she was supposed to let go or not, whether this was a battle that they were supposed to fight or whether it was easier to take the path of least resistance and give the woman what she wanted, which was a world where she didn't have to see anything that made her even vaguely uncomfortable.

"We're not hurting anyone," Clarke said. "Just do what you have to do."

"Not hurting—" the woman started, but Lexa stopped her with a glare. She didn't even turn around, just fixed her in her gaze through the mirror, and the woman stopped dead, shoving her daughter into the handicap stall and locking herself inside with her, huffing and grumbling as she did so, and snapping at her daughter to hurry up.

"We should go," Lexa said softly. "Before she makes a scene."

She sounded defeated, and it broke Clarke's heart. But she nodded and let go of her, and they headed for the bathroom door. Lexa stopped just before opening it, and turned back. "Your parents aren't always right," she said. "Love is never wrong." And then she yanked the door open and stepped out before the woman could say anything in return.

Clarke laced her fingers through Lexa's, squeezing hard, and didn't let go even as they made their way back to their table. Maybe no one noticed, and maybe everyone did. It didn't matter, really. It wasn't about them. She just needed Lexa to know that it didn't matter what people said, she wasn't going anywhere. 

Before they got back to the table, though, she stopped. "You know what?" Lexa looked at her, eyebrows raised. "Our food is probably cold by now – I think it's time for dessert." She smiled at Lexa. "We can always get more real food after."

Lexa's lips twitched, the barest hint of a smile. "And then more dessert."

"Exactly." So they detoured back to the buffet, and found little cups made of molded chocolate, filled with chocolate mousse, and maybe there was something to the whole chocolate defeats Dementors thing, because after a few bites Lexa seemed to slide back into herself – the self that Clarke had come to know behind the mask of the untouchable girl. The rest of the meal was uneventful, and they didn't mention to her mother and Marcus what had happened in the bathroom. 

Back at home, Clarke spent the rest of the day sorting through things, packing some stuff up and throwing other stuff away. Lexa mostly spent it alternately helping and checking her phone, which didn't seem to be giving her whatever she was looking for because she scowled at it every time. 

Finally they went to bed, and at first Clarke thought it was all right, but after maybe an hour, she was jostled awake by Lexa's tossing and turning. After a few minutes she settled, but it happened again an hour later, and again half an hour after that, and finally she shook her awake as gently as she could. "Hey," she said, when Lexa's eyes cracked open. "It's okay."

It was too dark to see clearly, but Clarke thought she saw the glimmer of tears rise in Lexa's eyes. "I'm sorry," she said. "I'll go sleep on the couch or something. The guest room."

"No," Clarke said. "You don't have to go anywhere." 

"I don't want to keep you up."

"You think that I wouldn't be kept up worrying about you if you were in another room?" Clarke slid one arm under Lexa's neck and shoulders, the other over her waist, pulling her closer and settling her against her body, relieved when Lexa draped her arm over Clarke in return, her head resting on her shoulder. "Is it that woman earlier?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa shrugged. "It's not one thing in particular," she said. "Some nights are just like this."

Clarke pressed her lips to Lexa's hair, breathing in the scent of her shampoo. "Thanks for the earworm," she joked, even as she rubbed her back slowly, trying to soothe away whatever was unsettling her sleep. 

"Mm?" Lexa asked. "What earworm?"

"Seriously?" Clarke twined her fingers through Lexa's hair, pushing it back from her face. "I know you didn't listen to music with words for a while, but this was before that."

"What was?" 

Clarke reached across Lexa to grab her phone from the nightstand, scrolling through until she found the song she was looking for, and pressed play. 

_Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck. Some nights I call it a draw._  
Some nights I wish that my lips could build a castle. Some nights I wish they'd just fall off.  
But I still wake up, I still see your ghost, oh lord— 

And Clarke tried to stop it there, realizing her mistake, remembering suddenly that the song was actually kind of depressing when it came right down to it, but Lexa caught her hand and stopped her. "It's all right," she said. "Let it be."

"You sure?"

"It's just a song."

"You avoided anything with words for—"

"Ten months. Roughly. I know." Lexa sat up, and Clarke followed, not wanting to let go of her, not wanting to break contact in the dark, because it felt too much like losing her and she couldn't risk that. "A thing only has power over you if you let it." 

Clarke wasn't sure she was talking about the music. "Come here," she said, extricating herself from the sheets and crawling out of bed. She held out her hands to Lexa. "Two am dance party."

"What?"

"If you can't sleep, sometimes what you need is a two am dance party."

"Your mother—"

"Will either sleep through it or come and scowl at us."

"Clarke, this is ridiculous."

"And?"

"And I don't dance."

"It's completely dark," Clarke said. "I won't even be able to see you. Please?" But Lexa didn't budge, so Clarke waited for the song to finish, then found another one, one that was far more upbeat, that she hoped Lexa wouldn't be able to resist. 

_Oh don't you dare look back, just keep your eyes on me._  
I said, 'You're holding back.' She said, 'Shut up and dance with me.'  
This woman is my destiny. She said, 'Ooh, shut up and dance with me.' 

And Lexa stood up, and Clarke found her hands and pulled her closer, not close enough that their bodies touched, but close enough that she had a sense of Lexa's presence in the dark, of the way that her body moved, and she was lying about not dancing. But then she hadn't said that she _couldn't_ dance, had she? She'd said she _didn't_ dance, which was something else entirely. Clarke wanted to turn on the lights, but it felt like if she did the moment would be shattered, so they stayed off.

_We were victims of the night. A chemical, physical Kryptonite._  
Helpless to the bass and the fading light, I knew we were bound to get together, bound to get together.  
She took my arm. I don't know how it happened. We took the floor and she said... 

They got to the final chorus before the banging on the door bled through, and then it burst open before Clarke could get to it. Her mother stood there, Marcus behind her, looking somewhere between bewildered and furious. They'd turned on the hall light, and Clarke blinked in the glare. 

"Clarke Marie Griffin, what on earth do you think you're doing?"

"Having a dance party," Clarke said. "Care to join us?" She thought she heard Lexa smother a laugh, and she grinned. 

"You should be sleeping," her mother said. "You have to drive tomorrow."

"We tried sleeping. It didn't really work out. Hence the dance party."

" _I_ should be sleeping," Abby grumbled. "Can you at least _try_ to keep it down?"

"Dance parties aren't quiet, Mom," Clarke said. 

"I can't tell if you think you're being cute or if you are actually trying to get me to throttle you," her mother grumbled, but Clarke could tell that she was already giving in, because this wasn't a battle she could win. "Ten more minutes," she said. "Understand?"

"Yes ma'am," Lexa said, answering for both of them before Clarke could argue. "Sorry to wake you."

"I'm glad one of you is." The door closed again, and they burst into laughter as the dark closed around them.


	90. Lexa

Lexa woke up exhausted, and the morning passed in a blur of packing up and saying goodbye. Clarke's mom hugged her, told her that it had been wonderful to meet her and that she was welcome back any time, and Lexa was pretty sure she mumbled something about, 'You too' but she honestly wasn't positive that the words made it past her lips. She felt like she was sleepwalking, and it was a relief when they finally got in the car and Clarke backed out of the driveway and pointed them back toward home. 

Except it wasn't actually home for Clarke. _This_ was home for Clarke... although that wouldn't be true for long, and Lexa didn't know if the new place that her mother and Marcus were moving to would ever actually feel like home to her. But it was where she would go for the summer, Lexa assumed, because Clarke hadn't mentioned anything about taking summer classes.

Of course, Lexa hadn't asked, either. It hadn't occurred to her _to_ ask until just now... and she wasn't actually sure she wanted the answer. The idea of Clarke going away for three, almost four, months was more than she wanted to wrap her mind around. Sure, it wasn't a terrible drive; they could probably arrange to see each other on weekends or whatever, but it wouldn't be the same as knowing that if Lexa needed her, Clarke was only minutes away. Or vice versa. 

She shifted in her seat, her lower back and hips already aching from sitting even though they'd only been on the road for a few minutes, and leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes, just for a minute.

She woke up when her phone rang, noisy and insistent in her pocket. She fished it out and looked at the screen, assuming it would be either Anya or a wrong number, because the only other person who ever called her was in the driver's seat, glancing at her curiously like she knew that this whole phone business was an anomaly. 

But the screen showed the one name that she'd been looking for all day yesterday, and that now she wished would disappear: her dad's.

She could ignore it, tell Clarke it was a number she didn't recognize, probably a telemarketer or something, let him go to voicemail and see if he bothered. But she'd called him first, asked him to call back, and just because it had taken him over 24 hours to return her call wasn't a license to be rude, or passive-aggressive. 

She slid her finger across the screen and put the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

"Hello." Her father's voice, low and softer than you might expect for a man of his stature, but she knew that he could crank up the volume when necessary, that he could bend his voice to command attention, and get it. "I just got your message."

No apology for not checking his phone for a day. No explanation as to why he hadn't. Just a statement, and the burden of carrying this conversation was going to fall on her, as usual, but she was tired. Exhausted and fed up both. She needed a nap (a longer nap than the one she'd had) and a cessation of the bullshit that passed for interaction between them, and she wasn't going to get either. "Okay," she said. 

"Was there something that you needed?" he asked. The implication being, of course, that she only called when she needed something. Which was more or less true, but only because she knew that if she didn't need something they had nothing to talk about, so she didn't bother. She didn't know what had possessed her to try reaching out yesterday like they were the kind of people who did things like that, who just called to say hello and see how the other person was doing. They weren't. They never had been. Maybe before... but her memories of her early childhood mostly featured her mother, and a man in uniform who wasn't around all that much. 

"No," she said. "I'm sorry if I worried you."

"I wasn't worried," he said. "I know that you can take care of yourself."

_Because I never had a choice,_ Lexa thought. _You gave me no choice._ "Now's not a good time," she said. "I'm in the car."

A pause, and then something changed in his voice, turning his usual flat disinterest into a growl. "You shouldn't have answered the phone if you're driving," he said. "It's dangerous, and illegal in most places."

Lexa felt her hackles rise (or they would have if she had hackles, anyway) and she straightened in her seat. "Number one, there are hands-free devices which make talking on the phone while driving no different than talking to the person in the seat next to you. Two, I didn't say I was driving. I just said that I'm in the car, which is true, but I'm the passenger. But thanks for your concern." There was no way to miss the sarcasm in her tone, and she could sense Clarke's eyes on her before they flicked back to the road. 

Her father didn't say anything for so long that Lexa actually pulled her phone away from her ear to look at the screen and make sure that he hadn't hung up. He hadn't, but they both sat there in silence, waiting for the other to speak, trying to out-stubborn each other. All of her worst qualities she'd inherited from him, whether it was nature or nurture. 

"I'm coming to town in a few weeks," he said finally. "I'd like to see you."

Lexa froze. She hadn't been expecting that. She hadn't been expecting anything from him, really, but after what she'd just said, she certainly didn't expect what might actually be the offering of an olive branch, the waving of a white flag, an attempt at a cease fire. (Might be, she reminded herself, but probably wasn't. Her father didn't surrender any more than she did.) She didn't know how to answer. She knew that the right answer, the only acceptable answer, was yes, of course, just tell me when. But she didn't want to say those words. She didn't want to make it that easy. They hadn't spoken in _months_ , and maybe that was as much her fault as his, but he was the adult, the parent, and wasn't it his job to check in, make sure that she was okay, especially given everything that had happened? 

But why deal with her when he could just check with Anya to see how she was doing? Because she had absolutely no doubt that he was in contact with her, at least periodically, to make sure that she was at least still alive. For all she knew, maybe Anya had put him up to this. Maybe she was tired of being caught in the middle of the cold war between them. Maybe she just knew that it wasn't healthy and wanted to try to make it right.

"When?" she asked. Not that it mattered. It wasn't as if her social calendar was full. The odds that she would have something else planned on whatever day he came were so slim the question was basically moot. 

"Plans aren't completely set yet, but it would be in about three weeks. Most likely arriving Friday and leaving Sunday, but I'm not sure what other obligations I'll have."

"Just let me know when you figure it out," Lexa said. "I'll see if I can squeeze you in." 

"You're angry," he said. "I'm not sure what I've done to upset you."

"Nothing. You've done nothing." Which was the absolute truth, or close enough to it, even as it left itself open to interpretation. "I have to go."

"I'll let you know as soon as I have my schedule," he said. "We'll go out."

"Sure," she said. "Email me or whatever." 

"Lexa..." But whatever he wanted to follow up his exasperated sigh of her name with never came. "I'll see you soon."

"Okay. Bye." She hung up and shoved her phone back into her pocket, then glanced over at Clarke as she saw that she was pulling over into a rest area. 

They parked, and she expected Clarke to get out to go pee or get food or whatever, but she didn't. She just turned and looked at her. "Your dad?" she asked.

Lexa laughed, a soft, bitter exhale. "How'd you guess?"

"Because I'm not sure it's possible to say so little and so much at the same time to anyone who hasn't known you your entire life," Clarke said. "Or to push buttons, and have your buttons pushed, so adeptly with so few words."

"I'm fine," Lexa said.

Clarke pursed her lips. "You told me you don't say things that you don't mean," she said. "Don't start lying to me now."

Lexa blinked. She hadn't expected Clarke to call her out, and she wasn't sure why she hadn't. Clarke wasn't the kind of person who was willing to accept bullshit from anyone, but especially not from people who had basically sworn that they would always be honest with her. But she couldn't do this. Not here. 

"Can we pretend that I mean it until we get home?" she asked. 

Clarke's expression softened. "Okay." She reached over and touched Lexa's cheek, tracing her thumb over her skin in a way that sent goosebumps down her arm, then let her go. "We might as well stretch our legs for a minute while we're here."

So they got out, and stretched and used the bathroom, and Lexa realized then why her back and hip were aching and why she was so stupidly emotional about everything, which was actually sort of reassuring, if a little embarrassing because she had to ask Clarke if she was more prepared for this particular biological fuckery than she was (because she should have seen it coming, but hadn't been paying attention to the calendar). Thankfully, she was.

Anya still wasn't home when they got there, so rather than retreating to Lexa's room, they curled up on the couch together, wrapped in blankets and with a supply of chocolate in easy reach on the coffee table. 

"He's coming to town in a few weeks," Lexa said finally, after being reminded (as she was every year) that Cadbury crème eggs tasted a lot better in her head than they ever did on her tongue. "He wants to see me."

"You don't want to see him?" 

"I don't know," Lexa said. "I haven't... we've barely spoken this past year. Last summer I could barely string words together, and he never pushed – except when he pushed too hard in the wrong direction and I almost packed up and left, and it was only Anya being a much more reasonable person than I was at the time that kept me from doing so – and then I went to Australia and trying to figure out time zones was a nightmare, or at least that's the excuse we used, and then I came back and... I guess neither of us has bothered." She shrugged. "But I don't get a choice. If he wants to see me, I don't get to say no."

Clarke nodded, reaching over to lace their fingers together, squeezing Lexa's hand gently. "Maybe it won't be as bad as you think," she said. "I managed to get through the weekend without fighting with my mom." 

"Would you have if I hadn't been there?" Lexa asked.

"Probably not," Clarke admitted with a wry smile. "Thank you. Again." She was quiet for a moment, then said, "I could go with you, if you wanted. When you see him. I could go with you."

"He's not like your mom," Lexa said. "I was with Costia for over a year, and he barely met her."

"Was that his choice, or yours?" Clarke asked. 

"I don't know," Lexa admitted. "Six of one, half a dozen of the other, maybe." It wasn't as if she'd tried to hide her relationship from him, but she hadn't exactly brought it up, either. She hadn't wanted to deal with any lectures he might have felt compelled to give about not getting attached to people when you know that you're moving on soon. (She'd given them all to herself, over and over again, and it had done no good.) Not that he'd ever actually said that, exactly... it was just something that she'd come to understand. You moved somewhere, met people, and lost them again when you left. It was the way of the world, and there was no point in trying to hang on to things that would slip away, usually sooner than later.

"If you want me to come, I'll come," Clarke said. 

"You don't have to," Lexa said. "I didn't do it to force you to return the favor."

"I never thought you did," Clarke said. "Even so, the offer is there. Just let me know."

"Thank you."

"You're welcome." 

There didn't seem to be anything left to say after that, or maybe they were both too tired to say it. They put in a movie and settled themselves in a nest of pillows and blankets to watch, but the warmth of their little cocoon and Clarke's heartbeat against her back was enough to drag Lexa down into sleep before they even got through the opening credits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for posting so late! I honestly and truly lost track of what day it is... At least I remembered before I fell asleep!


	91. Clarke

Clarke heard keys in the lock, and looked down to see if the sound of it had woken Lexa, but she was still passed out cold. So when Anya walked in, she immediately made a shushing gesture to keep her from saying anything that might disturb her. 

"How long has she been sleeping?" Anya whispered. 

"A couple of hours, but she barely slept last night," Clarke whispered back. She tightened her arms around Lexa protectively, as if somehow she could keep the monsters in her head at bay. It didn't work that way, of course, but it should. It should.

Unfortunately, her movement, and maybe her talking, made Lexa stir and shift and finally blink awake, immediately tensing as she tried to figure out where she was and who was there with her. 

"Shh," Clarke murmured, pressing a kiss behind her ear. "It's just me and Anya."

"Right," Lexa croaked, then cleared her throat and said in a more normal voice. "Hey. Welcome back."

"Thanks," Anya said. "How was your weekend?"

"It was good," Lexa said. "Clarke's mom made me an Easter basket. We have chocolate. Lots of it."

"Never a bad thing," Anya said, smiling. 

"How was yours?"

Anya shrugged and rolled her eyes. "It was home," she said. "With all of the baggage that goes along with it." 

Clarke didn't know what baggage that might be, but assumed that Lexa must, or Anya wouldn't have said it. She didn't know if Anya was using a sort of spoken shorthand to deliberately cut her out of the conversation because she didn't want to talk about it front of her, or if she just wasn't thinking about the fact that Clarke wouldn't understand. Not that it mattered either way; Anya's personal life was none of her business. 

Lexa sat up, untangling herself from the blankets. "Do you mind if I go shower?" she asked, looking at Clarke. 

"Go ahead," Clarke said. "I'll be here." 

"Okay." Lexa got up and disappeared down the hallway, and Clarke heard the click of the bathroom door behind her, and a few minutes later the water came on. 

Anya was in the kitchen, and Clarke got up to sit at the breakfast bar, watching her move around until Anya finally turned and looked at her. "Did you need something?"

Clarke bit the inside of her lip, knowing what the answer was likely going to be, but she had to ask anyway, because there was no way that you could succeed if you didn't try. "What's the deal with Lexa and her dad?" she asked. 

"You really don't beat around the bush, do you?" Anya asked, with a sort of half-smile that looked to be equal parts exasperated and admiring. 

"No," Clarke said. "What would be the point?"

Anya responded with a shrug that seemed to say, 'Fair enough.' "You know I'm not going to answer that, though. So why ask?"

"It doesn't hurt to try," she said. "I thought maybe you would at least give me some clue. Something to go on when – if – I meet him."

This time Anya's eyebrows crept up seemingly halfway to her hairline. "You're going to meet her father? She said that?"

"He's coming to town," Clarke said. "He called while we were driving back earlier. She... didn't sound thrilled about it, but she acts like she doesn't have a choice. Which I guess you don't, when it comes to parents. Not really." She certainly hadn't figured out how to say no to her mom, and maybe that was something that kids never entirely figured out, because no matter how old you got, you were always your parents' child. "I offered to go with her, if she wanted."

"And she said yes?"

"She said thank you," Clarke said. "Which I know isn't a yes or a no, but she came home with me this weekend, and I know that that wasn't because she expected me to reciprocate the offer, but it seems only fair, only right, that if she has to deal with him and doesn't want to, I can try to act as a buffer like she did for me."

"What else did she tell you?" Anya asked.

"That they've barely spoken in the past year. That after... after Costia died, she couldn't really talk to anyone, and then she went away and time zones made things tricky, and then since then, they just... haven't talked."

Anya nodded. "That's pretty accurate," she said. "Neither of them knows how to reach out. I don't think it's because they don't want to; I honestly think neither of them knows how. So they just... don't. They care about each other, but you wouldn't know it to see them together."

"Then how do you know?" Clarke asked. 

Anya took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "Because I've been stuck between them for the last year," she said. "I went out to check on Lexa after Costia's death, to see how she was doing, make sure she was okay. She wasn't, obviously, and she had no support. I ended up staying all summer, pretty much, and then figuring out a plan for what should happen next, because Lexa wasn't at a point where she could make those kind of decisions for herself, and what her father wanted..." She shook her head. "Since then, when he's wanted to know what's going on with her, he contacts me instead of her, because he knows that I'll actually answer him, and that I'll give him the truth. I've encouraged him to talk to her, obviously, but he hasn't done so. Up until now, I guess."

"That's... worse than me and my mom," Clarke said. "I thought _we_ were dysfunctional."

"How long have you been at odds with your mother?" Anya asked. 

"A few years," Clarke said. "I mean, pretty much since I became a teenager, but it was just normal teenage mother-daughter stuff until my father died. And even then I guess it was mostly normal grieving teenage mother-daughter stuff. I think maybe I was just being stubborn about a lot of things, and not _wanting_ to patch things up because I'd invested so much time and energy into being angry with her. Which is messed up. I get that."

Anya nodded. "With Lexa and her father – and this is the last thing that I'm telling you about them, the rest you really need to get from Lexa, because this isn't really mine to tell – it's basically been her entire life. He was just starting out in his career when she was born, and he had to really dedicate most of his time to his work. Then her mother died, and they never quite figured out how to pick up the pieces and be a family of two. To me, being with the two of them, it always felt like they were a puzzle with a missing piece, and they were too busy focusing on that missing piece to realize that they might fit together, too."

The water shut off in the bathroom, and Clarke knew that the conversation was over, because she was pretty sure Anya didn't know Lexa knowing that they'd been talking about her while she was out of earshot any more than Clarke did. "Thank you," she said. 

"You're welcome," Anya said. "Good luck."

But even when Lexa emerged, her wet hair braided back, they didn't talk about it. They didn't talk about much of anything, because a little while later Clarke got a text from Octavia wondering where she was and when she was coming back to the dorm. 

"Go on," Lexa said. 

"Are you sure?" Clarke asked, because she certainly didn't look sure. She looked tired, and in need of a hug, and like being alone with her thoughts was the last thing that she wanted. Not that she would be completely alone; Anya was here. 

"I'm not going to be any kind of company tonight anyway," Lexa said. "Go. I'll talk to you later."

Clarke hugged her tight and kissed her softly. "If you need anything..." Because she looked small and lost and Clarke didn't feel great about leaving her.

"I'll call," Lexa said. "I promise." 

Which had to be good enough. Clarke kissed her one more time, and went to go see how Octavia had fared. 

But of course Octavia wasn't interested in talking about her own weekend. "Mom's fine, Bell's fine, everything's fine, blah blah blah," she said, grinning. "I want to hear about _you_ , and how bringing bae home to meet mommy dearest went."

Clarke rolled her eyes, but she couldn't help laughing. "It went fine," she said. "Better than fine, actually. Mom really seemed to like her." It came out sounding like she was a little bit surprised by that, and maybe she was. After all, she'd never brought a girl home before, at least in that context, and although she'd been pretty sure her mother would be fine with it, there was never a way to be one hundred percent sure until you actually did it. And then there was the fact that Lexa wasn't exactly the most communicative or demonstrative person in the world, and a lot of people were put off by her somewhat aloof demeanor, which Clarke knew was intentional on Lexa's part because she didn't suffer fools gladly, and looking like you might kick them out of a 10-story window without a second thought tended to keep a lot of them at bay.

"That's good," Octavia said. "Right? I'm assuming that you _wanted_ your mom to like her?" 

"Yes," Clarke said. "I wanted Mom to like her. Not that it would have made a difference if she did or didn't; it wouldn't change how I feel about her."

"And she doesn't think you're rushing into things?" Octavia asked.

Clarke frowned. "What do you mean?"

"You've only been with her – like actually dating – for a couple of weeks, and you're already bringing her home for the weekend. Some people might think that that's rushing things a little."

"Some people?" Clarke asked, and she couldn't keep the annoyance out of her voice, because it sounded like Octavia was projecting her own feelings onto Clarke's mother, using her as an excuse to say the things that she wanted to say but wouldn't or hadn't because she didn't want to piss Clarke off. Which obviously wasn't working. 

Except that wasn't really Octavia's style, usually. Octavia tended to tell you what she thought whether you wanted to hear it or not. It was one of the things that Clarke appreciated about her. So maybe she was reading things into it that weren't actually there.

"My mom certainly would," Octavia said. "But then, she's got two kids by guys that she probably should have gotten to know a little – or a lot – better before she hopped into bed with them, so... maybe she's biased."

"Honestly, we didn't get into the details of things much," Clarke said. "They didn't ask, and we didn't tell." 

Octavia frowned. "So... they don't actually know you're together?"

"They do," Clarke said. "But we didn't make a big announcement about it or anything. We just didn't hide it, either. They figured it out."

"Did your mom say anything at all?" Octavia asked. 

"The only thing she really said to me was, 'I like her.' And she told Lexa that she was welcome to come back and visit. So..." Clarke shrugged. "I think maybe since we weren't making a big deal about it, she was trying not to, either. But she's not stupid, and even if we're not big on PDA... well, the fact that we were sharing a bed when there's a guest room should have been a pretty big giveaway."

"Right." Octavia rolled her eyes. "But otherwise it went okay?"

"Once Lexa called us both on our bullshit, yeah," Clarke said. 

"She did _what_?"

"We were being... kind of passive-aggressive," Clarke admitted. "We were out to lunch and fighting but trying not to fight because we were in public, I guess. And Lexa got fed up and just told us both to grow up, basically. Only she was very polite about it. Diplomatic."

"And your mom was okay with that?" Octavia asked. "With being... called out?"

"She kind of had to be," Clarke said. "Like I said, we were in public. Oh, and then somehow at Easter dinner Lexa ended up getting upset, and she got up to go to the bathroom to calm down, and my mom looked at me and said, 'Aren't you going to check on her?' I said that maybe she just need a minute, and she said, 'Then let her tell you that.' So... yeah, pretty sure she figured it out."

"I'm glad that things worked out," Octavia said. "I was a little bit worried."

"Me too," Clarke admitted. "But yeah. Things are good. Mostly. Now Lexa's dad is coming to town soon, and that's a whole other thing."

"Are you going to meet him?"

"I said I would go with her if she wanted," Clarke said. "There's a part of me that hopes she doesn't take me up on it. My mom can be a little intimidating, but Lexa's dad... I'm pretty sure he takes it to a whole new level."

"What makes you say that?" Octavia asked.

"Because Lexa had to get it from somewhere."

Octavia laughed. "You have a point." She nudged Clarke's arm. "Dining hall or pizza?"

"Definitely pizza," Clarke said. "Should we see if Raven wants to join?"

"You call her, I'll call for food," Octavia said.

Clarke pulled out her phone and dialed.


	92. Lexa

Once Clarke left, Lexa curled back up in the pile of blankets that had been left behind. She stared at the TV, not processing anything that was happening on the screen. The only thing she was acutely aware of was the absence of Clarke... and the fact that it was probably a bad thing that she was so bothered by it. It wasn't – couldn't be – healthy to be so attached to someone that after spending the better part of the last four days with them, you still don't want to be away from them. She'd told her to go, told her that she wouldn't be any kind of company, and that was probably true, but it didn't mean that she'd wanted to. 

Did that count as a lie? She didn't want to lie to Clarke, now or ever, but it was selfish to keep her here when she had other, better things to do. 

Maybe it was all hormones and pain talking. 

She accepted the mug of tea that Anya handed her with murmured thanks, and sipped it, grimacing.

"I tried," Anya said. "I tried to make it more palatable, but there's really nothing for it."

"It's okay," Lexa said. "It's not that bad." It wasn't that bad. It was worse. But it would help with her cramps and that was the point. She tried not to think too much about the fact that Anya had seemed to understand what was going on without her having said anything. Was she keeping track? Or was Lexa just not as good at hiding things as she thought she was? 

"Liar," Anya said. "You _could_ just take Advil like a normal person," she pointed out. "It tastes a lot better."

"You know I hate taking any of that stuff." 

"I know." Anya shook her head. She knew, but she didn't understand, and Lexa had never really been able to explain her aversion to painkillers to her, or anyone, in any way that actually made sense to them. Hell, she wasn't sure that she completely understood it herself. It was just the way that she was, and maybe it came from her mother, way back when she was little, looking for other ways to take away the pain of burns and blisters and scrapes than just giving her a pill, or maybe it was from her father who never let on that he was in any kind of pain, ever, and so she'd been expected to tough it out as well, or maybe it was both, or neither.

Whatever it was, the tea helped, and why not use older, more natural remedies when they worked? 

"How bad?" Anya asked. 

Lexa shrugged. "Being in the car didn't help."

"Lay down."

She thought about arguing, but only for a second. The truth was that it was bad, worse than it had been in a while, and she knew that these things were cyclical (obviously) and that this just happened sometimes, but she couldn't help thinking that maybe the fact that she wasn't actively trying to be numb for the first time in ten months might have something to do with it. The fact that she was actually inhabiting her skin, letting herself feel, _wanting_ to feel... maybe this was just an unfortunate side effect. 

She folded up some of the blankets and then laid down on the couch on her stomach which wasn't ideal but they didn't really have a better option. Anya knelt beside her and began working her fingers over her lower back, up her spine and down her hips, because that's where she felt it more than anything, which wasn't exactly normal but she'd never bothered to find out why. Maybe her doctor-to-be girlfriend could tell her, if she asked. 

"Just breathe," Anya said, and Lexa exhaled, not realizing that she'd been holding her breath. "Good. Relax." 

Anya was by no means an expert, but it wasn't the first time that she'd done this, and it probably wouldn't be the last. The first time had been on the camping trip they'd taken last summer when the topic of what she was going to do when summer ended had become too heated, and she'd threatened to leave and never return, and she'd found herself caught off-guard and without anything to take to combat it, tea or otherwise. 

Although Lexa had never really said it out loud, because she didn't want to make things awkward, she enjoyed the attention. She liked being touched, knowing that there was nothing behind it but the desire to alleviate pain, but that it came from a place of... care? concern? But it was more than that, and they both knew it. It came from a place of love, and why – how – had that become such a loaded word? Why was platonic love so devalued? Why was romantic love the only thing that seemed to matter to anyone, to the point where you couldn't – or didn't – say 'I love you' to anyone that you weren't related to by blood (and sometimes not even then) or sleeping with. 

"It's bullshit," Lexa said, not realizing she was saying them out loud until they were already out.

"I agree," Anya said. "Anything in particular?"

Lexa cracked open an eye and saw that Anya was smiling. "The whole 'We're just friends' thing. As if being 'just' a friend somehow made your relationship of less value. But that's bullshit. Romantic relationships come and go... for a lot of people, anyway. You fall in love, and then you fall back out of it. But your friends... people keep friends for years. For lifetimes. So how is that 'just' anything?"

"Ah," Anya said. "You're definitely preaching to the choir there." She let her hands just rest at the small of Lexa's back, the heat seeping through her skin. "How's that?"

"Better," Lexa said. "Thank you." 

But neither of them moved, and Lexa closed her eyes again. "Clarke... it's not just about..." She stumbled over how to say it, how to make it so that Anya could understand. 

"Pantsfeelings?" Anya supplied, and Lexa could hear the suppressed laugh in her voice.

Lexa rolled her eyes, even though Anya probably couldn't see that from behind her eyelids. "Sure," she said. "It's not just about being attracted to her on a physical or sexual level. She's my friend, too. She would be my friend even if she'd never kissed me back... if she was able to get over the fact that I'd kissed her, anyway. And I guess if I could get over loving her – being in love with her – and her not loving me back in the same way."

"But she does," Anya said. "I mean, she did kiss you back, and she does feel the same way about you as you do about her."

It wasn't a question, and it made Lexa's heart beat a little harder, knowing that Anya could be so sure of it, that the connection between them was... tangible enough, she guessed, for other people to perceive it. 

"I know," Lexa said. "I'm just saying, she's my friend too. Not just my lover. Sometimes... sometimes I think that's not true, or not always true even when it sometimes is, with a person."

"'I love you, but I don't like you very much right now,'" Anya said. 

"Yes."

"I think that's true in any kind of relationship, really," Anya said. "You and your dad, for example."

Lexa tensed, and Anya felt it and began working her thumbs along Lexa's spine again. "I don't want to talk about him," Lexa said. 

"I know," Anya said, "but you need to. Clarke said he was coming to visit. She said she offered to go with you."

"She did," Lexa said. "I probably shouldn't torture her with that."

"Would it be torture?" Anya asked. "Was it torture meeting her parents?"

"Mother. And her mother's... significant other." 

"Okay. That doesn't answer my question, though."

"No," Lexa said. "It wasn't torture. They've got their own issues, but I think maybe they're finally working them out. It's not the same. They _want_ to fix things."

"You don't?"

"It doesn't matter what I want," Lexa said. "It has _never_ mattered what I want. I was just some _obligation_ that he had."

"You think so?" Anya asked. "You think that—"

Lexa rolled over, pulling her knees up toward her chest, and glared at Anya. "Don't you _dare_ defend him to me," she said. "Don't you realize, don't you think it's _fucked up_ that you know my father better than I do? That you talk to him more than I do? That you have more investment in my relationship with him than I do?"

"Yes, it's fucked up," Anya said, her tone level. "It's all incredibly fucked up. But I don't think I'm more invested than you are. I think you are _incredibly_ invested in your relationship with your father. I think what you've invested, though, is a lifetime of anger and resentment. I think you've let things fester in silence for so long, and now it's all coming to the surface, because now you're out in the world and you're realizing, because you're witnessing how other families work, the fact that this isn't normal. But still you keep your silence."

"What the hell am I supposed to do then?" Lexa demanded. 

"Talk to him," Anya said. "Scream at him, if that's what it takes."

"That's a little difficult when he only ever sees me in public places," Lexa said. "I'm pretty sure that's what he has planned."

"Then you change the plans," Anya said, "or you add on to them. If you go out somewhere to eat, bring him back here to talk after. You do what you need to do, Lexa. This is your life, and for so much of it, things just happened to you. You moved here, you moved there, you were told what to do and you did it. Just because something has always been the way doesn't mean it always needs to be. You're allowed to be the one issuing the commands now. It's your life. You get to decide what shape it will take now. Talk to him. But listen, too. You have every right to hold him accountable, but try to hear him out. He's not a monster."

Lexa sighed. "I know," she said. "I know. I just..."

"You've just felt secondary your entire life," Anya said. "You've felt like an afterthought."

"Yeah."

"I don't think you were," Anya said. "At least not as much as you felt like you were, but that doesn't invalidate your feelings. I think it's at least worth trying, don't you?"

Lexa shrugged. She honestly didn't know. Was it worse to try and fail, or to not try at all? But you couldn't succeed if you didn't try. Maybe Anya was right. Or maybe this would all backfire and things would end up worse than ever... but at least she would know once and for all where things stood.

"Just think about it," Anya said. She stood up and then leaned down and kissed the top of Lexa's head, and Lexa knew what she was saying without her saying it... because bullshit or not, sometimes it was just too hard to untangle a lifetime of silence.


	93. Clarke

"I need a break," Octavia announced, getting up and stretching. "I am so ready for this semester to be over."

"You and me both," Raven said, digging her knuckles into her hip. 

They both looked at Clarke when she didn't immediately agree, and she grimaced, trying to fake a smile that she didn't feel. 

"What's wrong?" Octavia asked. "You look like someone pissed in your Cheerios."

"One," Clarke said, "ew. Two, I don't have any Cheerios. Three... I'm ready for classes to be over. But I'm not actually ready for it to be summer."

"How can you not be ready for four months of freedom from having to get up and get to class at an ungodly hour, and staying up way too late trying to finish the reading that they swear is absolutely critical but never gets discussed?" Octavia asked. 

"Yeah, but then I have to go home," Clarke said. "Home to a place that isn't even home, that I haven't even seen, to spend four months with my mother, her... whatever, and a newborn. So it's not like I'll actually get to get any more sleep than I do now, and probably less."

"Earplugs," Raven said. "At least you _get_ four months off. I'm stuck taking summer classes to try to make up for the semester I missed and the credits that didn't carry over so that I can actually graduate on time."

"I thought about taking summer classes," Octavia said, "figuring if I do a couple of classes over the summer I can take fewer classes during the semester and actually get a decent part-time job, but I guess financial aid doesn't cover the summer semester? And where would I live? So... I guess I'm going home, too."

"I'm moving in with Gina," Raven said. "Her roommate graduated and is moving out, but she's staying on to do grad work, so she needed a new roommate. Now I won't even have the leave the comfort of my own home to cat-sit when she goes away."

"That's awesome," Clarke said, and meant it, because she knew how much Raven hated living in the dorms. "I'm glad that that worked out for you. Both of you."

"Me too," Octavia said. "I _wish_ I could stay. Bellamy is staying, getting an apartment with some friends, but little sisters aren't invited."

"Would you really want to live with a bunch of college guys?" Raven asked. "They would probably just assume that because you have tits, you'll do all of the cooking and cleaning."

Octavia snorted. "I would have no problem disavowing them of that notion," she said. "Believe me. Anyway, Bellamy is a way better cook than I am."

"Is he?" Raven asked. "Hmm..."

Octavia looked at her, one eyebrow raised. "Hmm? You do not 'hmm' over my brother."

"He's not really my type anyway," Raven said. 

"What's your type?" Octavia asked.

"Assholes, apparently," Raven replied, rolling her eyes. "I don't even know. I just need to focus on me for a little while, I think. I invested so much time and energy into Finn, and me-and-Finn as a couple, that I feel like maybe I don't know who I am without him, entirely. So... maybe my type needs to be myself."

"I'm sure that you can build yourself the perfect battery-operated boyfriend," Octavia said, and ducked out of range of the pillow that Raven launched at her, but they were both laughing. 

"Speaking of boyfriends," Clarke said, "what about Lincoln?" 

The smile slid from Octavia's face. "What about him?"

"Just... have you talked to him about the summer? About being away for so long?"

"I don't live that far away," Octavia said. "We could still see each other." But from the look on her face, she either hadn't really thought about it, or _had_ thought about it and was trying (and failing) to convince herself that everything was going to be totally okay. "And there's this amazing invention called the phone. Maybe you've heard of it?"

Clarke rolled her eyes. "I've heard of it. It's just... not the same." 

"What about your girl?" Raven asked. "Because that's what we're really talking about here, isn't it? You're asking O about Lincoln, but really you're worried about what's going to happen with you and Lexa if you go home for the summer."

"Guilty as charged," Clarke admitted. "I just... it doesn't feel right. I know that the semester isn't over, and maybe things will feel more solid by the time that it is, but..." She shrugged. "I don't want to go home. I don't want to deal with my mother full time. I don't want to be hours away from Lexa. What if she needs me?"

"What if you need her?" Raven asked, but it wasn't really a question. "That's really what you're worried about, isn't it? You have a bad habit of projecting."

"It's both," Clarke said. "She's... I won't say she's fragile, because she's strong as hell... but yeah, she's also kind of fragile. She's been through a lot, and she's still dealing with it."

"Have you talked to her about it?" Octavia asked, turning Clarke's own question back on her. 

"Not yet. I will. I just... I guess I need to figure out what I need to do for myself first. She's part of it, but she's not all of it." She glanced at Raven as she said it, and saw the way that her jaw set. She knew that Raven was worried that Clarke was going to fall into the same trap that she had with Finn, but it wasn't like that. There was nothing even similar about the situations, because she and Lexa were both equally invested in their relationship, and maybe she was wrong, but Clarke was pretty sure that the relationship between Raven and Finn had always been out of balance. Raven had needed Finn more than Finn needed Raven. 

"So what do _you_ want to do?" Raven said. "If Lexa wasn't in the picture, what would you want to do with your summer?"

"I still wouldn't want to go home," Clarke said. "I'm working things out with my mom, but I think it's better right now to do that with a little bit of distance. It's not something that's going to fix itself overnight, and it's definitely not something that's going to be improved by both of us being sleep-deprived and stressed out because there's a new baby in the house."

"Okay," Raven said. "Makes sense. So... what would you want to do instead?"

"I would need a place to stay," Clarke said. "Obviously. And—"

"That's not what I asked," Raven said. "You're already worrying about the details. Look at the big picture. If you're not going home, what do you see yourself doing? Working? Just chilling out?"

Clarke frowned. She hadn't actually thought about it. Which was weird, probably, because how was she supposed to convince her mother of something when she didn't have a plan? Not that her mother got a say in things, because she was eighteen, and an adult, and she got to make her own decisions. But the truth was, she wasn't exactly in a position, financially, where she could just do what she wanted to do without her mother's help. She knew that her father had left her money, but it was specifically set up so that it could only be used for her education until she turned 22. So she was eighteen, but her mother still held the purse strings. 

"No, not just chilling out," Clarke said. "Although I'd like the chance to do some of that. I'd like to do some traveling, maybe. I'd like time to get back into art."

Raven nodded. "Sounds good. What else?"

"I don't think I want to take summer classes," Clarke said. "I want a break from that." Because it had been a hell of a semester, and she honestly felt like she needed some time to just decompress without a lot of pressure to get things right, or at least not the kind that would go on her transcript. 

"So you want to do _something_ but not classes," Raven said.

"You could get a job," Octavia said. "Maybe we could work somewhere together."

Clarke grimaced, swallowing back the words that made their way to the tip of her tongue way too quickly. She didn't want to piss Octavia off, for one, and for another, it would have made her sound like a horrible snob. And maybe in some ways she was. She was sure as hell more privileged than either of her friends, and sometimes she forgot that, but sometimes, thankfully, she remembered before she could say something accidentally awful.

"I was actually thinking of seeing if maybe I could get an internship somewhere," Clarke said. She knew that it would be good to get all of the experience that she could, because it would all look good on her resume when she went to apply for internships after med school. Sure, without a medical degree it would probably mostly be a lot of office work, but even that was valuable on some level, wasn't it?

"Oh," Octavia said, and even though she tried to mask it, Clarke could hear that she was disappointed. "I guess that's probably a good idea for you."

"You could too," Clarke said. "Somewhere."

"I think in order to get an internship you actually have to have an idea of what you want to be when you grow up," Octavia said. "You have to be passionate enough about something to go out there and make the connections you'll need to make to get you where you want to be in the future. Plus not all of us have mothers who have strings they can pull to make things just happen for us."

Clarke felt the words hit like a slap in the face. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it, took a breath, let it out. "I would rather do it on my own," she said. "I would rather not have my mother pull strings for me. But you're right. If that's what it takes, I probably will, because I know I should have been figuring this out months ago, and now I'm coming at it really late in the game. But that doesn't mean I won't work just as hard – harder – than everyone else to prove myself."

Octavia looked at her, and the silence was charged, until she finally looked away and nodded. "Sometimes I wish I had as much conviction as you do. Both of you. You know what you want. You've always known. I'm just... I know what I don't want. I don't want to end up like my mom. Even without the mental illness. I don't want to be working dead-end jobs to try to scrape by, always looking for the right guy who never comes along, trying to raise two kids whose father's never wanted them. That won't be me. That's all I've told myself my entire life, all I ever really thought about as far as the future goes: that won't be me."

"And it's not you," Raven said. "You're in college. You're doing all of your gen eds while you figure out where you want to go from here. People like me and Clarke, we're more the exception than the rule, I think. There are plenty of kids who go to college either not really knowing what they want to do, or thinking they know but then they change their mind. They take a class that sparks something in them, and they realize, 'Wait, I was wrong, _this_ is it. This is where I want to be. This is what I want to do.' There's nothing wrong with that."

"But that hasn't happened yet," Octavia said. "What if it doesn't? I can't just throw away money and come out at the end of this with a degree that isn't going to get me anywhere because I still don't know what I want to do."

Raven stretched, her hands reaching up toward the ceiling, and rolled her shoulders as she brought them back down. "What do you love?" she asked. "What do you find yourself thinking about when your mind wanders?"

"Other than Lincoln?" Octavia asked, smiling crookedly.

"Other than Lincoln," Raven said.

"Training," Octavia said. "I think about the dojang."

"All right," Raven said. "What about it?"

"Just... getting to move, and learning how to defend myself, helping other people learn how to defend themselves... kicking the crap out of the heavy bag after a bad day..." She grinned.

"Is there some way to leverage that into a job?" Raven asked. "Putting aside the fact that it kind of sucks that all we're ever focused on is 'Can this thing that I love make me money?' because that's how this country works, and if what you love _won't_ make you money than obviously it has no value." 

"I don't know," Octavia said. "I mean, I'm just a yellow belt. Lexa says that if I test every cycle, I should be able to get my black belt before I graduate, but if I take summers off I might not, but that doesn't really mean anything. Like you can be an assistant instructor when you're a black belt, but to be an actual instructor all on your own, I'm pretty sure you have to be, like, fourth degree. So say in three years I get my black belt, and then it's another two years for second degree, minimum, and three years for third after that, and four years for fourth after that. I'm guessing, anyway. So that's twelve years. I'll be _thirty_ by then."

Raven laughed. "Thirty isn't that old, in the grand scheme of things," she pointed out. "But fine, okay, so that would be a long term goal, maybe. In the shorter term... just try to think about what it is, specifically, that you like about it. Think about other ways that you can manifest that in your life, and what classes might be helpful to you to turn that passion into a degree."

Octavia nodded. "Thanks," she said. "That... actually helps."

"You're welcome," Raven said. "I've been reading a lot of self-help books lately." Clarke looked at her, not sure if she was joking, until Raven laughed. "Not _really_ ," she said. "Who's going to pay money for that when you can find it all for free on the internet?"

"I can't even deal with you right now," Clarke said, shaking her head and trying not to grin. She gestured to the mess of books and papers spread out between them. "Let's get this thing done, huh?"


	94. Lexa

Lexa came out of the changing room and was about to head for the car where Anya was waiting when Master Gustus stopped her. "Do you have a minute?" he asked.

"Sure."

"Come into the office."

Maybe it was just years of being in school, and 'the office' being a place that a student never wanted to have to go, because it almost certainly meant that they were in trouble, but Lexa felt herself tense, preparing for fight or flight, because she expected (even though there was no reason to) that this meant she had done something wrong. But she went and sat down on the chair across from Master Gustus's desk, watching as he wedged himself into his own, too big for this small space. 

"I wanted to know if you were planning on going home this summer," he said. "I know last summer—"

Lexa shook her head quickly, before he could say anything else about last summer. She wanted to forget last summer... or not forget, exactly, but... not remember? Which was the same thing, but not exactly. Not in her head, anyway. She wanted to put it behind her. That was probably the best way to phrase it. She wanted to move on. She _had_ moved on, and the less she thought about it, the better, because she didn't want to get dragged back down into dark places, and... and here she was, already spinning out over a simple question. "No, sir," she said. "This is my home now."

Because home wasn't really a place for her. It hadn't been since she was very small. Home was people. Her father, when she was growing up, although that had often felt like a latchkey-kid kind of home – a place to live but rarely anyone there – and now Anya. And Clarke. Clarke was her home now.

"I'm glad to hear that," Master Gustus said, smiling a little through his thick beard, which was always a little unnerving. "I find myself in need of some assistance."

She frowned. "What kind of assistance?" she asked.

"One of the students who helps out in the juniors class all the time is graduating high school this year, and he's going away pretty much right away for a summer program before he starts college in the fall. The class tends to be pretty big, and I'm in need of someone to take his place, at least temporarily. The pay isn't much, but I can also give you a discount on your tuition here... if you're interested."

"Juniors?" she asked. "Not the little kids?"

"Not the little kids," he said. "I know you're not a big fan of chaos." He smiled again, bright enough this time that it reached his eyes. 

"How often?" she asked. "I don't know what my other plans are for the summer." She needed to figure it out, though, because the end of the semester was approaching more quickly than she could have imagined, and if she was going to take summer classes she needed to register, but it all seemed a little overwhelming. Most of the past year had been all figured out for her by her father and Anya. Having to take control of her life again was daunting. And necessary.

"As often as you can, honestly," Master Gustus said. "Every day, if you want, but if that's not possible due to other commitments, I'll understand. And I'm able to be flexible. If you can't make it, as long as you can try to give me at least a day's notice, I can see about finding someone else for that day, or brace myself to go it alone."

"Can I think about it?" Lexa asked. She knew that it was a good offer. It was a job she wouldn't hate, but he'd already said the pay wasn't much, and even every day only added up to five hours a week. Still, a job was a job, right? Even if she would probably need to find something else, too. 

"Of course," he said. "Also, there's the day camp that I run for two weeks in August," he said. "I would love to have you help out with that as well. That would be more hours and more pay, obviously. So think about it, and let me know as soon as you can."

"Yes sir," she said. 

"I'm sure Anya's waiting," he said, by way of dismissal.

"Good night, sir," she said.

"Good night, Lexa." 

She got up and left the office, grabbing her bag and going out to the parking lot, where Anya was leaned against the car, talking to Lincoln. 

"Uh-oh," Lincoln said. "What'd you do?" He was teasing, obviously, and she knew it, but she couldn't quite make herself smile, and in response his own dropped. "It wasn't actually anything bad, was it?" he asked, suddenly concerned.

"No," Lexa said. "It's fine. He was just asking if I was interested in helping with some of the classes."

"Oh, right. Because Sean's leaving," Lincoln said. "Are you going to do it?"

"I told him I had to think about it," Lexa said.

"What's there to think about?" Lincoln asked. "You just show up an hour early, wrangle kids – some of which actually want to be here and learn – and get a paycheck. Did he ask you about doing camp?"

"Yeah."

"You should do it," Lincoln said. "I did it last year, and it's actually a lot of fun."

"Are you doing it again this year?" she asked.

"Absolutely. Sure, it can get a little crazy, but it's only two weeks, and it's not all Tae Kwon Do, all the time. We go to the pool and stuff, too. And at the end of the two weeks he usually does a big trip. I'm not sure where it will be this year, but it's a good time. Seriously, think about it."

"I will," Lexa said. 

They said their good nights, and Lexa dumped her bag in Anya's trunk, then got into the passenger's side. "I'm going to need a car," she said. "If I'm coming here early every day. And just in general, for the summer."

"It might not be a bad idea," Anya said. "You know I'll do what I can, but it might be harder to coordinate schedules during the summer." She looked at her sidelong, smirking. "You could always ask Clarke if you needed a ride and I'm not around."

"I don't even know if Clarke is staying for the summer," Lexa said, and the words came out slightly strangled, slightly pained, and she hadn't realized (or hadn't let herself think about) just how much the idea of a summer without her would hurt. Last summer...

"Have you asked her?" Anya turned the key in the ignition and backed out of the space, turning the car toward home. 

"We haven't really talked about it," Lexa said. "I guess I was waiting until I'd figured out my own summer first."

"I assume you're still figuring that out?" Anya asked. "You haven't mentioned anything, anyway."

"I still need to decide... a lot of things," Lexa said. "Like if I'm going to change my major."

Anya nodded, but didn't comment, and maybe she really was going to back off and let Lexa sink or swim on her own now. Not that she wouldn't be there, ready to throw a lifeline to her if necessary, but... She was twenty years old, or nearly, and she needed to take charge of her own life at some point, and probably Anya was tired of taking care of her, anyway. 

"If I do, I have to figure out if there's classes I need to take to get me up to speed, and whether I can take them in the summer, or..." Lexa shook her head. "Every time I think about it, it just... feels like too much. But I know I have to figure it out. I know that I don't have a choice, and I don't have a lot of time, and sometimes I wish I'd been given the chance to just take a semester off and just deal with everything, but I don't know if I actually would have, and maybe if I had I would have just... let my life implode around me? I don't know."

Anya reached over and put her hand on Lexa's knee, squeezing gently. "Just take it one step at a time," she said. "It's a big decision, but it's not irrevocable."

"If I change my mind again, I'll probably end up in school for longer," Lexa said. 

"Which wouldn't be the end of the world," Anya said. "I know it feels like it would be, especially when you see the tuition bill, but it's really not. We'll – if you want, we can look things over together, see what you might need to make up if you decide to change, look at what's ahead, and whether it's something you really want to pursue. Maybe—" She stopped herself. "One step at a time," she repeated, smiling wryly. "For now, we're just going to go home and shower, and enjoy the fact that it's Friday."

Lexa nodded. "Okay." She looked over at Anya. "Thank you. You don't... You know you don't _have to_ help, right? You've already—"

"I offered," Anya said. "That's what friends do. They help each other. I know that if I needed something, you would step up and help me, too. And maybe someday that day will come. For now, though... I know I'm not _that_ much older than you, but I've discovered that that couple of years can make a big difference as far as perspective goes."

"Thank you," Lexa said. 

"Are you going to invite Clarke over?" Anya asked, the change of subject abrupt but welcome.

"I was thinking about it," Lexa said. "But then there's class in the morning."

"She's a big girl," Anya said. "She can stay there alone for an hour. Or she can come watch." 

"She doesn't like watching much," Lexa said. "She said it makes her nervous."

"She's afraid you're going to get hurt?"

"Yes and no," Lexa said. "She's not necessarily afraid I'm going to get hurt in class, but especially when we're doing self-defense and weapons, she says she can't help thinking about me having to actually use it in real life, and that upsets her."

"Okay," Anya said, "I can see that. Especially given what she went through."

"Exactly."

"Like I said, she's welcome to stay at the house while we're at class tomorrow. I trust that she won't burn the place down."

When they got home, before she got in the shower, Lexa called Clarke. She was about to give up, undecided as to whether or not to leave a voice mail, when Clarke picked up. "Sorry!" she said, sounding out of breath. "I couldn't find my phone. It was buried under a pile of Octavia's clothes, because her closet exploded all over the room."

"I can't find the top I want to wear!" Octavia complained in the background. "The shiny black one that's cut really low in the back."

"Well I don't know where it is!" Clarke said. "It's not like I could borrow it!"

"I would let you," Octavia said.

"Because me wearing something that doesn't allow me to wear a bra is going to end well," Clarke said dryly. "Anyway..."

"Are you two going out?" Lexa asked.

"No," Clarke said. "O is going out with Lincoln."

"Is that why she skipped class? To get ready?"

"No," Clarke said. "She skipped class because she decided to actually be a responsible student and finish a paper that's due Monday _now_ instead of Sunday night, so that she doesn't have to worry about it all weekend."

"Pretty smart, huh?" Octavia chimed in. "I'm not just a pretty face."

Lexa couldn't help laughing. "I never thought you were," she said, and Clarke relayed the words.

"Um, excuse me," Octavia said, her voice suddenly close like she'd grabbed the phone from Clarke. "'This isn't cardio kickboxing'?"

Lexa grimaced. "Okay, maybe I did for a minute," she admitted. "You proved me wrong."

"Yup," Octavia said. "Please tell me that you were calling to spare my roommate a weekend of being a sad, lonely nerd. Because if you don't invite her over, she might be forced to spend her Friday night _studying_."

She rolled her eyes. "I was, actually, if you'll put her back on the phone."

A rustling noise, then Clarke's voice again. "Sorry. She just took it."

" _There_ it is!" Octavia announced triumphantly, and Lexa could imagine her holding up the shirt like a prize. 

"So do you want to come over?" Lexa asked. 

"I _do_ need to study," Clarke said. 

"I won't stop you," Lexa said. "But you can be a happy, not lonely nerd here, can't you?"

There was a pause, and then Lexa could hear the smile in Clarke's voice when she said, "I'll be right over."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what to say. I really don't. Maybe I shouldn't say anything at all. Maybe this isn't the place. Maybe I should leave this story to stand on its own, a refuge from reality...
> 
> ... But I feel like I have to say something. I feel like I have to try. 
> 
> I didn't see this coming. I really didn't. I honestly, truly never believed that this could happen. Sure, we might have to bite our nails for a bit, but in the end, Trump's candidacy would turn out to be some giant, cruel, cosmic joke. Love would triumph, and hatred would be defeated. We would move forward with hope. 
> 
> I thought we were better than this. I really, really, really did.
> 
> I cried myself to sleep last night (what little sleep I got). I'm crying now. I have no comfort to offer, no solace. My heart is broken, my faith in humanity in tatters. I don't how to move forward from here. But we have to. 
> 
> Be kind to yourself, and each other. Be strong. Be brave. Love. Above all else, love.
> 
> If you need someone... I'll try. I swear I'll try. You can find me at eternaleponine [at] gmail, ironicsnowflake on Twitter and Tumblr.


	95. Clarke

The drive back to her mother's house (it was getting harder to think of it as home, and maybe that was a good thing) was longer and lonelier without Lexa, and Clarke couldn't help regretting the fact that she hadn't invited her to come along. But she knew that Lexa had a paper that she needed to write, and she didn't want to distract her from getting it done, or at least started. So she hadn't asked, because if she had Lexa would have said yes, and then had to either try to work on it while Clarke was finishing packing things up, or scramble to do it when they got back. Neither of which were ideal working conditions. 

And Clarke would have to figure out how to face all of this on her own at some point. It might well be now. 

She pulled into the driveway and parked her car beside her mother's. Marcus's car was there as well, and Clarke took a minute to compose herself before getting out and heading for the garage, punching in the code and hitting the button that made the big door clatter upward. Once inside, she hit the button that made it go back down again and headed inside.

"Oh!" her mother said, blinking as if startled to see her standing there. "You must have gotten an early start."

"I didn't sleep very well last night," Clarke admitted. 

"Bad dreams?" her mother asked.

Clarke shrugged. "Just... stress. End of the semester and all that." That, and the fact that she'd sort of gotten used to not sleeping alone, and her bed in her dorm room felt narrower and harder than ever now, when she spent half the time sleeping in a much bigger, softer bed, with Lexa in her arms. Which didn't always lead to a good night's sleep, but it was worth it to wake up next to her. 

"It's tough, but you'll get through it," her mother said. 

"But it doesn't get easier," Clarke said. "I mean, next year is going to be harder than this one, and the one after that, and the one after that." She still had a lot of years of school left before she would really be able to call herself a doctor, and the idea of it was sometimes pretty daunting. 

"It does and it doesn't," her mother said. "This is your first year, so you're still learning how to balance school and life, and getting used to the routines of college, and figuring out how to budget your time. You're dealing with being away from home for the first time, and being responsible for making sure that you're fed and that your clothes are clean and all of that for yourself. Not that you didn't do a lot of that anyway, but it's different when it means walking to the dining hall or hauling your laundry down to the basement or wherever the laundry room is in your dorm. And you have to get used to living with someone, as well, which is likely tougher for you than it would be for someone who had grown up with siblings."

"I got lucky there," Clarke said. "Octavia is an awesome roommate."

Her mother smiled. "She is," she agreed. "And yes, you got very lucky. Are you two going to live together next year?"

Clarke nodded. "We do room selection this week. We're hoping that maybe we can get a room that's a little bit bigger this time around." Not that either of them was likely to be spending a lot of time in it... but she probably shouldn't say that to her mother. 

"That's good," Abby said. "Are you already working on final papers and projects?"

"Yeah, for some classes," Clarke said. "In my military history class we actually got the assignment right after spring break, since it's a group project and they wanted to make sure that we had enough time. Luckily, groups could be as small as three, so it's me, Octavia, and our friend Raven working together. Thank Anya."

"Anya?" her mother asked.

"Our TA. She was the one who convinced the professor that groups of three to five were better than four to six, even though it would mean more projects to grade, just so that we could work with each other without having to deal with other people. Because we actually share the work, and trust each other to get stuff done." 

"She did it just for you?" She sounded skeptical.

"She's kind of a friend, too," Clarke said. "She's in charge of our discussion section, and she and the other TAs made some kind of bet as to whose students would do best in the class, so she bribes us to do well on tests and stuff by saying that she'll make dinner for anyone who gets an A. She's a good cook." She bit the inside of her lip. "She's also Lexa's roommate. That's how I met her. As a person, not just a TA."

Her mother's eyebrows went up slightly, but she nodded. "How is Lexa?"

"She's good," Clarke said. "She had a paper to write this weekend."

"Ah." Abby wiped some dust off a picture frame, then wrapped it carefully and put it in a box. "I'm pretty sure I already know the answer, but I'd rather make sure that I'm not just imagining things. Is she your girlfriend?"

"Yes," Clarke said, and it struck her that that was the first time she'd actually said it, or confirmed it. Everyone else that was important in her life right now had kind of been part of the whole process of the relationship coming to be, so she'd never had to tell them, 'Oh, by the way, this is Lexa. We're dating.' 

"You could have told me," her mother said. "You didn't have to hide it. As long as—"

"We didn't hide it," Clarke said. "We just didn't feel the need to make any kind of announcement. We figured that you would figure it out, and if you didn't, then maybe it was because you didn't want to. Either way, we didn't want to make it a bigger deal than it is."

" _Is_ it a big deal?" Abby asked. 

Clarke frowned. "Not unless you make it one."

Her mother shook her head. "I'm sorry. That's not how I meant it. As long as you're happy, and healthy, then I'm happy. I guess what I'm really asking is, is it serious?"

"It's new," Clarke said. "It's still new. But... it's good. It feels good. It feels _right_. So yes, I guess it's serious."

Her mother nodded, and her expression was hard to read. Clarke guessed that she was probably trying to decide whether to just smile and be happy for her, or whether to give her some motherly advice about caution and making sure that she kept her perspective, and that relationships were great, and important, but she shouldn't lose track of who she was and who she wanted to be, where she wanted to go and what she needed to do to get there. 

Clarke didn't need the lecture. She could give the lecture to herself, and hear it in her mother's voice. She didn't want it to turn into an argument, either, because Lexa's presence in her life wasn't negotiable. She wasn't a distraction; she wasn't going to pull Clarke away from the things that were important to her. She was as driven as Clarke, and she understood what it was like to have a goal and that sacrifices sometimes had to be made to get there, but that you also needed support, and she gave Clarke that. They supported each other. 

Would there be times where they got a little bit caught up in each other and put off doing something that needed to get done until a little later than was probably advisable? Sure, absolutely. But that was something that happened to every student at one point or another, and as long as they didn't make a habit of it, they would be okay. 

"Octavia and I are thinking about subletting an apartment for the summer," she said, changing the subject abruptly and probably opening herself up for a whole different lecture... or maybe the same one, if her mother decided that she was making the decision just to be closer to Lexa, and not because it was what she felt was best for herself.

"Are you?" Abby asked. "Why would you do that?"

"Because she doesn't want to go home; she wants to work and maybe take some classes this summer, and I want to see about doing an internship somewhere." _And I don't want to have to share a house with an infant all summer._

"I can help you find one here," her mother said. "It wouldn't be hard."

"I want to try to do it myself," Clarke said. "I know that it's kind of late to be starting the process now, but I have a few leads. I asked one of my professors and she says that she has a friend who is looking for research assistants for the summer. I'm going to talk to her more about it this week, but my professor likes me so I know she'll put in a good word, and it would be good experience, both doing the work and making connections."

Abby frowned. She didn't approve, but she couldn't actually disapprove, either, because it was clear that Clarke had although thought things through and had at least the beginnings of a plan in place. "Is it a paid position?" she asked. "Connections are great, but your time is valuable, and no connection is really worth working for months for nothing."

"It's paid," Clarke said. "I don't know exactly how much, or how many hours a week it is, but she definitely said that it's paid."

"Enough to support yourself for the summer?"

"I don't know," Clarke said. "I just said I don't know exactly how much."

"What do you plan to do if it's not enough?" her mother asked. "It's not just rent. You have to think about utilities and food, at the bare minimum, but there's also cable and internet, the former of which you can probably live without, but not likely the latter."

"If the research position isn't full time, then I could get another part-time job to make up the difference," Clarke said, although the idea of doing so didn't thrill her. It wasn't that she was afraid of hard work... it was just that the type of job that was likely to be hiring seasonally wasn't anything she probably wanted to get involved with. Her personality wasn't exactly suited to a 'the customer is always right' environment. Because sometimes the customer was an idiot.

"You're pretty set on this, then?" 

"Yes," Clarke said. "I love you, Mom, but I can't do this..." She gestured to the boxes, and her mother's belly, and back toward the guest room where she could hear Marcus shifting things around, "... all summer. I can't. It's too much."

She could see that the words hurt her mother, but she couldn't, and wouldn't, take them back. Finally, shockingly, her mother nodded. "I guess I can understand that," she said. "And it seems like you have thought this through pretty well. So..." She frowned, putting a hand to her back and arching it as if to ease tension. "I don't want you to have to work two jobs just to make ends meet. Find an internship of some kind, make sure that they're paying you a reasonable wage for the amount of work that they're expecting you to do – and you can check with me if you're questioning it – and if it's not enough, then I'll help you make up the difference."

"I'm not asking you to," Clarke said. 

"I know," Abby said. "I'm offering." Her frown deepened, and she finally sat down on the couch. "I was going to wait to tell you this, but maybe now is as good a time as any, since it might end up being important sooner rather than later."

"What?" Clarke could feel her stomach knotting, bracing herself for some kind of bad news. 

"This house... it was your home. When Marcus and I decided that we wanted to move, we thought about asking you if you wanted to keep it, even though it would have meant paying for our place and making sure that this one was maintained until you were out of school and ready to live in it. But then Jackson expressed interest in buying it, and there's a very real possibility that even if you do eventually decide to come back to this area, it could potentially be sitting empty for a very long time before that happens. Yes, it could be rented out, but we didn't want the responsibility of being landlords, and doubted very much that you would, either. So instead we decided that all of the money that came from selling this house is yours. To help pay for school, although your father and I planned for that so that _should_ be covered, or to buy your own home someday, or whatever you decide is the best use for it. If you decide that you want to use some of that money toward supporting yourself this summer, I certainly wouldn't argue with you."

Clarke blinked, sinking down on the couch next to her mother. She hadn't been expecting that. She hadn't been expecting _any_ of that. "Are you... are you serious?"

"Yes, Clarke. I'm sorry that you're losing your childhood home, but the least I can do is make sure that it helps you build the brightest future possible." She reached out and took Clarke's hand, squeezed it. "It's what your father would have wanted."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a long, hard week for many of us, and right now it's hard to know what I, or any of us, can do. But many of you have mentioned that having stories to escape to helps. I was planning to do this anyway, but now it's more important to me than ever.
> 
> So. The holiday season is coming up, and I want to give you all something. Yes, something beyond this story. So I'm opening myself up to prompts. They can be for the characters in this story - deleted scenes, bonus scenes, stuff with characters other than Clarke and Lexa - all fair game. (Obviously not things that haven't happened yet, but that probably goes without saying. Or I can tell stories from within the canon world, or some other AU that you dream up. 
> 
> There are things I won't do (rape/non-con, anything with a significant power differential, ABO, Clexa babies - sorry, it just doesn't fit with my versions of them) but basically anything else, feel free to ask. If it's something I absolutely won't do, I'll let you know. Some ideas may get modified in the writing process. But I'll do my best. 
> 
> I can't promise that I'll get to every prompt, depending on how many you throw my way. But my goal is to post something every day in December, so... there's a good chance. 
> 
> So go ahead. Send me your prompts. In the comments here, via email (eternaleponine [at] gmail) or on Tumblr (ironicsnowflake - ask or IM). I'll be taking them pretty much through the end of December, but honestly if it's after that you can still send me stuff because sometimes I need ideas so you never know. If you send it to my anonymously on Tumblr, I won't be able to respond, but please be assured that I'm keeping track!
> 
> Hopefully it will make all of our days a little brighter.


	96. Lexa

"I can't do this," Lexa said. "Anya, I can't."

"What, set the table? I'm sure that someone taught you which side the knives and forks go on at some point in your life, and if not, there's always Google." She flashed Lexa a smile, but looked ready to dodge in case Lexa decided to launch any of said cutlery in her direction. 

"That's not what I'm talking about and you know it," Lexa grumbled.

"Do I?" Anya asked. "Because the only other option I can think of is that you're saying that you can't talk to your father, and that just doesn't make any sense, so I figured it had to be the table."

Lexa's cheeks burned, with anger and embarrassment both. "Passive-aggressive really doesn't suit you," she said. 

"Would you rather I went full-aggressive?" Anya asked. "Because I can do that, but I thought maybe it would be better to leave you in an at least halfway decent mood."

"I'm not in a halfway decent mood," Lexa said. "I'm furious."

"At who?" Anya asked.

And that _was_ the question, wasn't it? Who was she angry at? Anya, for talking her into this? For having the idea to have her father over for dinner rather than going out somewhere to eat, so that they could actually talk about things that mattered, and if things got heated they wouldn't have to worry about what anyone around them might be thinking? But she'd let herself be talked into it, maybe even thought for a second that it was a good idea. So she should be mad at herself, then, for not thinking this through, for actually picking up the phone and calling her father and asking him to come here... 

She didn't _want_ to be angry at herself. It was too exhausting. She wanted to be angry at her father, and she _was_ , but that was exhausting too. Which was why when Anya had suggested, again, that maybe it was time to finally really talk to him, to have it out and settle things once and for all, she had thought maybe it wasn't the worst idea she'd ever heard.

That was then. This was now, and she'd changed her mind.

"Relax," Anya said. "You're going to be okay."

"What if I'm not?" Lexa asked. And that was the other part. She'd finally started to put the pieces back together. She'd finally started to feel whole again. Was this _really_ the time to open the closet door and let the skeletons roam? Was this really the time to reopen old wounds? 

"If you're not, then we work through it until you are again," Anya said. 

"We?" Lexa shook her head. " _We_ can't put me back together if I fall apart. Only I can, and maybe I won't be able to this time."

"Only you can do the work on the inside," Anya said, then grimaced but plowed on. "But I will be here to support you in whatever way you need. And so will Clarke. You know that. She will help you pick up the pieces, fit them back together, fill the cracks with gold."

"Stop," Lexa said, sniffing and blinking hard. "I don't know if this mascara is waterproof."

Anya turned to look at her, and set aside the spoon she'd been stirring with to come over and pull Lexa into a quick hug. "You're not alone, Lexa," she murmured. "No matter what, you're not alone."

"What part of 'stop' didn't you understand?" Lexa asked, half-laugh, half-sob. She grabbed a paper towel and dabbed at her eyes. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Now finish setting the table. Fork goes on the left, knife and spoon on the right."

Lexa rolled her eyes, and breathed, and set the table. Anya finished up the cooking, and pressed a quick kiss to the top of Lexa's head with a whispered 'Good luck' before disappearing out the door. Lexa didn't know where she was going, only that she would stay wherever it was until Lexa gave her the all-clear. 

At exactly six o'clock, the buzzer went off, and Lexa went down to open the door. Her father stood there, tall and imposing even without his uniform. "Lexa," he said.

"Dad."

Neither of them made any move to hug the other like a normal parent and child would do after not seeing each other for nearly a year. But they weren't hugging people. Her father had never been big on affection, and Lexa has inherited – or maybe just learned – that awkwardness. Usually, anyway. With most people. 

"Take off your shoes," she said when they got up to the door of the condo. "House rules."

He did so without comment, and stepped inside. She watched him take it in, the warm colors and comfortable furniture, the smells of freshly-made food, the fact that this place looked and smelled and _felt_ more like a home than anywhere they had ever lived since her mother died. 

"We should sit down," she said. "The food will get cold."

"You cooked?" he asked, and it irked her that he sounded so surprised about it, and it irked her more that it irked her in the first place, because she should be used to this kind of shit. It wasn't that he meant to cut her down, it was just that he didn't actually know anything about her, when it came right down to it.

"Anya did," Lexa said.

"Oh. Will she be joining us?"

"You would like that, wouldn't you?" Lexa said, the words out before she could stop them, and since it was too late to take them back, she didn't bother to try. "Then she could deal with me and you wouldn't have to."  
Her father frowned, but apparently he didn't feel like it was worth addressing. "The food is getting cold," he said, as if he'd been the one to bring it up in the first place. "Why don't we eat?"

Lexa wasn't hungry. Her stomach was in knots and she doubted that she would be able to force down more than a bite or two. But she went to the kitchen and put food on plates and brought it to the table, making sure that her father had water in his glass like a dutiful daughter. She sat down and pushed her food around her plate, staring at it so she didn't have to look at him, wondering why she'd even bothered. 

Finally he set down his fork. "What is it?" he asked. "There's obviously something that you want to say, so just go ahead and say it."

"Why?" she asked. "You've never cared before. Why start now?"

He blinked. "Of course I care, Lexa. You're my daughter." As if she ought to know that. 

"Really? Because it doesn't really feel that way." 

He looked at her for a long moment, and then looked away. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry that you feel that way."

She snorted. "That really doesn't mean anything, you know. 'I'm sorry that you feel that way,' is how you apologize without actually accepting any responsibility. It's putting all of the blame on me, on my feelings, instead of on yourself for making me feel this way."

"One person can't make another person feel any particular way," her father said, focusing on her again. "You are in control of your own emotions, and how you let other people make you feel."

Lexa blinked, her mouth hanging open. After a second she closed it and shook her head, hard. "Are you serious?" she asked. "I go through the worst thing I've ever gone through, and you're basically completely absent while it's happening, and it's _my_ fault that I feel abandoned?"

"What are you talking about?" he asked. "Lexa, you need to use—"

"My words? I need to use my words? When has that ever done any good? When have you ever, _ever_ cared about what I had to say?" But she didn't give him a chance to answer. She was as guilty as he was, because she didn't care what he had to say, either. If he wanted her to use her words, well, he could have them. A year's worth of them. A lifetime's. 

"Costia was _killed_ , and you did _nothing_. You let Anya take over, take care of me, make sure that I ate and showered and went through the motions of being functional, and you let her send me away... halfway around the world!... rather than letting me take a semester off to recover, just so you wouldn't have to deal with me. But hey, that was a compromise, right? If you'd had your way, I would be in the military right now, where you also wouldn't have to deal with me. I would definitely be someone else's problem then, right? But I guess that shouldn't actually surprise me, considering the fact that you did the _exact same thing_ when Mom died. She loved me, and you didn't. I don't think you even _wanted_ me, and she _died_ and you just packed me up and sent me away, and I didn't see you for _six months_ , barely heard from you, and I just had to figure it all out on my own, because it wasn't like your parents were going to help. Your father told me that Mom was an idiot and took away the best coping mechanism I had, and... and I guess I know where you get it, where you learned to be so cold, so... _inhuman_ , because by the time you got back, by the time you decided... whatever you decided, I don't even know and I don't think I really care, by the time you got back, I was already becoming just like you. Shut down, closed off. Swallow it down, bottle it up, don't let anyone in."

She swiped at her eyes, not caring if it smeared her makeup, because what did it matter? She might as well look as much a mess as she felt. "And you can tell me all you want that you tried, that you did the best that you could... and I know that that's true. I know that you could have left me there with them. I know you didn't have to figure out a way that you could keep me with you. And I know that you could have just kept me locked up safe on base, that lots of kids got moved all over the world and never really saw any of the country that they were in, and you didn't do that. You brought me with you and showed me the world, and let me see it, experience it. And for that... I'm grateful. I am. I'm grateful that you always found a dojang for me, if there was one to be found. I'm glad that you gave me something that I could have that was consistent in my life, something to hold on to, somewhere I could belong, since home was never that place. But do you know what it's like to grow up not feeling like you have a home? To hear people say, 'Home is where the heart is,' and have that mean _nothing_ to you, because the place you go back to at the end of every day, the person that you share it with, is devoid of anything remotely resembling a heart?"

"Yes," her father said, looking at her. His voice was soft, and it cracked even on the single word. "I know exactly how that feels. And that was never the legacy that I wanted to give you, but... your mother died, and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know how to cope. I—you weren't planned. When you were born, I had no idea what to do with something so tiny, so fragile, so completely dependent on me... so I left that part of it to your mother, and I just focused on making sure that we had a roof over our heads, food on the table... I thought that was the best, most important thing that I could do for you. So when she died, I had no idea how to be a father. I left you with my parents because I thought you would be better off. I thought—" He stopped, shook his head. "I didn't think. Not really. I panicked, and I ran. I was a coward. And you're the one who paid for that."

"Why did you come back?" Lexa asked. "If you didn't want me—"

"I never said I didn't want you," he told her. "That's not what I'm saying. I just didn't know how to do all of the things that your mother had done, and..." He sighed. "After I'd had a little time to process the grief, I knew that I couldn't leave you there. I knew that your mother never would have wanted that. It took a little time to make the arrangements I needed to, and I didn't want to take you out of school in the middle of the year and cause more disruption in your life, so I waited until the summer to come get you. And then it was just the two of us, but I still didn't know how to fill in the hole that was left in our family, and... I got it wrong. A lot. I got it wrong more often than I got it right. But I saw the person you were becoming, saw how brave and strong and smart and bold you were. Saw how you took everything in stride, how you adapted so easily to every new situation and environment, saw that you were growing up to be an amazing young woman, and I knew that that wasn't because of me, but in spite of me, and at that point it seemed like getting involved would have just... gotten in the way. When you fell in love with that—with Costia, I didn't know what to do. I knew that there was a very real chance that you would get your heart broken, because most first loves end that way. But then when it ended the way that it did..." He shook his head. "I don't handle grief well. Obviously. So I stepped back again and let someone else take care of it. I shouldn't have, but I did."

He reached across the table, laid his hand over hers. "I hurt you. Deeply, and repeatedly. The fact that it was never my intention doesn't change the damage that was done. I'm sorry. I will try—I _will_ do better. I will do everything I can to support you, in whatever way you need me to."

Lexa swallowed, her eyes swimming again. She pulled her hand away and stood up. "I'm going to go warm this up," she said, taking both plates back into the kitchen and microwaving them, her back turned as she breathed through it, working to compose herself. 

_That_ was a real apology. And he was right, that intentions didn't change impact. But it helped, a little, to at least have some kind of explanation. She didn't know where it left them, exactly... but maybe the bridge between them wasn't completely burned.

She brought the plates back, set them down, and sat, forcing herself to take a bite, chew, swallow. "After dinner we can go out for ice cream," she said. "There's someone I want you to meet."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that I am taking prompts for my plan to flood you all with Clexa goodness during the month of December. Doesn't have to be anything elaborate - a particular AU, a song, even a word or phrase, anything you can think of! More details in the notes on Ch. 95. Comment, email (eternaleponine [at] gmail), message me on Tumblr (ironicsnowflake)!


	97. Clarke

"Will you _stop_?" Octavia asked, looking up from her laptop. "You're been pacing for the last _hour_ and you're driving me crazy. If you need to move, why don't you go for a walk or something?"

"Sorry," Clarke mumbled. "I'm surprised you're here."

"I have to get this done," Octavia said. "Anyway, Lincoln is busy. I'm surprised _you're_ here."

"Lexa's with her dad," Clarke said. 

"Ahhh," Octavia said, like it suddenly all made sense. "She'll be fine."

"They don't really get along," Clarke said. "Or... I guess it's not really a matter of getting along or not getting along when you barely speak. But she said she was actually going to try to talk to him tonight, and I don't know how that's going to go."

"That's sweet that you're worried about her," Octavia said, "but she'll be fine. She's a badass bitch from hell." She grinned. 

"That's what she'd like people to believe," Clarke said. "But sometimes that's just a façade."

Octavia raised an eyebrow. "What exactly are you afraid is going to happen?"

"Just..." Clarke sighed. She didn't even really know. She was just worried that he would do or say something that would bring up all of the old hurt, all of the grief, and she would be left to deal with that, and she wouldn't know how. She was afraid that when push came to shove, she would let Lexa down. "I just want her to be happy."

"That's not really the be all and end all of life," Octavia said. "Happiness has no meaning if there aren't low points, too."

"She's been in a low point for the last _year_ ," Clarke said. "She was just starting to come back from that, it seemed like."

"Sometimes it's two steps forward, one step back," Octavia said. "I don't think there's any way that she's going back to where she was a year ago, or even where she was when you first met her. How could it? Things have changed since then."

"Like what?" Clarke asked.

Octavia rolled her eyes. "Uh, like _you_ ," she said. The 'dummy' that followed it was unspoken, but Clarke heard it loud and clear. "How can she go back to square one when she's got someone who loves her to back her up? Unless you two are being stupid about it and pretending that that's not what this is?"

"What? We're not pretending..." Clarke's forehead furrowed as she looked at Octavia. "What are you even talking about?"

"People who are completely head-over-heels for each other refusing to admit it. Refusing to say the words because they think they're trite or cliché or whatever. I would hope you aren't one of those people."

"She knows I love her," Clarke said. "How could she not know?"

"Have you _said_ it?" Octavia said.

"Of course I have," Clarke said, but then she wondered if she really had. Out loud, without any caveats. She must have. Only now she was having a hard time remembering when. But Lexa knew, just as she knew that Lexa loved her. It was in every look, every touch, and actions spoke louder than words anyway. Especially with Lexa. 

"Good. Then even if she takes a step back, she knows there's something to keep moving forward for." 

Clarke couldn't help wondering what counselor or social worker these words of wisdom had come from originally, because she couldn't imagine Octavia coming up with them all on her own. Not that she couldn't arrive at the sentiment independently, but it would come out a lot different if she wasn't parroting back something that she'd been told once or twice or a dozen times before, probably about her mother. 

Or maybe she was underestimating her friend.

Her phone buzzed, and she quickly pulled it from her pocket, afraid that the message would be from Lexa, but even more afraid that it wouldn't be, and she would be left hanging for longer, waiting to find out how things had gone.

**LEXA:** Ice cream?

**CLARKE:** Yes. Now?

**LEXA:** If you're not busy.

**CLARKE:** I'm not. I'll be there soon.

She shoved her phone back in her pocket and grabbed a hoodie from her closet. "I'm going out," she said. "I'll... I'll text you later, since I'm sure one or both of us won't be here tonight."

Octavia grinned. "I certainly don't plan to be, as soon as this damn paper is done. Go. Have fun with bae. Tell her hi from me."

"Will do," Clarke said. "Later."

She decided to walk to the ice cream place, because the night was nice, it wasn't that far, and it would have been a pain in the ass to find parking downtown on a Saturday night anyway. Somehow she failed to notice the tall, stern-looking man with the shaved head standing near Lexa until after she'd already leaned in to kiss her. Lexa quickly turned her head, diverting it to her cheek, but slid her arm around Clarke's back. "Dad, this is Clarke. Clarke, my dad."

_Shit._ Maybe she should have expected this, but a little warning would have been nice. "Nice to meet you, Mr—" But mister wasn't right. He was in the military. He had a rank, a title... which she didn't know, and she'd never bothered to ask. 

"You can call me Titus," he said, reaching out and shaking her hand firmly. Clarke caught a glimpse of Lexa's face out of the corner of her eye as he said it, and it was all she could do not to laugh at the 'who are you and what did you do with my father?' expression she wore. 

"Yes sir," Clarke said, because even if he gave permission, she wasn't sure she could actually bring herself to call this man, who maybe didn't _mean_ to be intimidating but was, with his height and the stiffness of his spine, by his first name. It would have been worse, she was sure, if he was in uniform, but it wasn't difficult to imagine the button-down shirt and khakis transformed into something much more formal. "It's nice to meet you." Had she already said that? She had. She groaned inwardly. Some first impression.

"Ice cream," Lexa prompted, and edged them toward the door, her hand still resting lightly against the small of Clarke's back, and she wasn't sure if it was to reassure her, or Lexa, or both. They stepped inside, immediately surrounded by the smell of sugar, and she could tell that Mr. – Titus – wasn't comfortable in the small space packed with people. 

"I'll wait—" he started to say, but Lexa fixed him with a look, and he stopped. Clarke could see the tension all through him, but he stayed where he was. 

"He's going to get vanilla," Lexa said in a stage whisper that wasn't even a little bit subtle. "He always gets vanilla."

"I _like_ vanilla," he said. 

"And you might like other flavors, too," she said, "but you never try them."

There was a whole lot more to the words than just a discussion of ice cream flavors, and although Clarke wasn't clear on all of the details, she could certainly pick up the gist. Lexa was laying down a challenge, and it was pass or fail, and the consequences of failure went far beyond just an exasperated eye roll. 

"Have you ever been out to get ice cream with her before?" Titus asked, his words directed at Clarke. "We could be here a while." There was the faintest hint of a smile, and she was pretty sure he meant the words to be teasing.

"No," Clarke admitted. "But she did warn me." She made herself smile, because she didn't want to mess this up and make things worse than they already were. 

"I already know what I want," Lexa said, "so you both can zip it."

"What are you getting?" Clarke asked. 

"Milk & cookies."

"That _does_ sound good. I think I'm going to get the salted caramel blondie."

"I haven't had that one," Lexa said. "I think it might be new."

"You can have a bite," Clarke promised, slipping her arm around Lexa as they approached the counter, so that they stood hip to hip, and if Titus noticed or cared, he didn't say anything, and Clarke wasn't sure whether that was a good sign or not.

They ordered their ice cream, and when it was Lexa's father's turn, he opted for chocolate chip cookie dough. Lexa looked at him and rolled her eyes. "That's just vanilla with chunks in it," she said. 

"But it's not vanilla," he replied. 

"If you eat around the chunks..." But the threat went unfinished as they were handed their cones. Titus paid for all three, waving away Clarke's attempt to pull out her wallet to cover herself, and they stepped back out into the open air, where both Lexa and her father seemed to relax a little.

They walked a little until they found a picnic table. Titus sat on one side and Clarke sat next to Lexa, on her left so that their elbows didn't bump (but when they walked it was the other way around – she was always on Lexa's right, and it felt weird and wrong if she wasn't). She offered Lexa a bite of her cone, and got the same in exchange, and they agreed that both were excellent choices. 

"I'm going to change my major," Lexa said suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere but maybe it was a continuation of a conversation she'd been having with her father earlier that Clarke hadn't been a part of.

Or maybe not, given the expression on her father's face. "To what?"

"Law."

His eyebrows shot up before he controlled his expression, and Clarke knew then where Lexa had learned to mask her emotions so quickly and thoroughly. "I see." He took a bite of his ice cream, and once he had chewed and swallowed, said, "You always swore you would never follow in my footsteps."

"I won't," Lexa said. "I will be so much better than you could ever hope to be. I will actually do _good_ in the world."

Titus said nothing to that, which surprised Clarke, but maybe not really. It was clearly meant as an attack, intended to provoke a response, and he knew that, and she assumed he was refusing to give Lexa the satisfaction of getting one. "Why the sudden change of heart?"

"It's not sudden," she said. "It's been a year in the making. There was no justice for Costia."

"Her parents refused to press charges."

"Even if they had, there would have been no justice," Lexa said. "You and I both know that. Not with her being just some teenage girl and the man who hit her having a chest full of medals. He never would have had to spend a single day in jail for murdering someone, because not all lives are created equal, are they? 'We hold these truths to be self-evident' is bullshit."

"The most a prosecutor could have hoped for was manslaughter," Titus said. "There was no intent."

Lexa bristled, and Clarke found her free hand under the table and squeezed it. Lexa squeezed back, so tight that it was painful. "What if it had been me?" she asked. "What if I had been with her, and it had been me that had been struck and killed? Would you still just sit there and shrug?"

"I am not going to indulge you in a game of hypotheticals," Titus said. "There is no way—"

"I _loved_ her," Lexa snapped. "She was my _world_. And you sit here and act as if her life, and her death—"

"Sometimes that's how things go," Titus said. "This isn't a storybook or a fairy tale. The good guys don't always win and the bad guys don't always get their comeuppance. If you think that you are going to able to—"

"I think that I can _try_. I think that this world is full of injustice, and that the worst thing that anyone can do is just sit by and let it happen, just shrug their shoulders and say, 'I'm just one person. What can I do?'" 

"You would make yourself a martyr? Throw your—"

"Stop." The words had been shooting back and forth across the table in vicious hisses, too quiet to draw attention from anyone around them, but Clarke heard every word, and she couldn't, she refused, to let it go on any longer. "Please. Stop."

Titus looked at her, and Clarke thought she saw a flicker of relief in his eyes. "Thank you, Clarke," he said. "Sometimes—"

"This isn't about you," Clarke said, and turned her attention to Lexa, who was watching her warily, like a child who knew that they'd done something wrong and were just waiting for punishment to be doled out. "I can't sit there and listen to you fight over whether or not your death would matter. It _would_ , Lexa, and if you don't know that, if you—" She choked on the lump in her throat and couldn't continue.

Lexa's eyes widened, and her mouth hung open like she had something she wanted to say, but no words came. Clarke saw her eyes go to her father, just for a second, and then she seemed to dismiss him, and she squeezed Clarke's hand again. "I'm sorry," she said. "I wasn't – I didn't think."

"I know," Clarke said. 

Titus got up and threw out the rest of his ice cream and came back, wiping his hands carefully with a napkin. "I should get back. Tomorrow is going to be a long day."

Lexa looked at him for a long moment, and Clarke could feel her tense, and then the fight just seemed to go out of her. Defeat, or resignation... and maybe a little bit of relief. "Have a good night," she said.

"You too. It was nice meeting you, Clarke."

"You too," she echoed, and watched as he walked away. No hug for his daughter, no 'I love you'... nothing. He hadn't seen Lexa in the better part of a year, and that was how they left things? Maybe they had plans to see each other again before he left town, but...

"I thought my relationship with my mom was fucked up," Clarke said, not entirely meaning to say the words out loud... but maybe not entirely _not_ meaning to, either. 

Lexa looked at her, and Clarke could see the tears that brimmed in her eyes, threatening to spill even as Lexa tried to blink them away. "Believe it or not," she said, "that was better than it has been."

Clarke pulled her into her arms, holding her tight and kissing her softly, the corner of her mouth and her cheek and back by her ear. "I love you," she whispered, because sometimes you needed to hear it. 

"You're getting ice cream in your hair," Lexa replied, but Clarke heard the words behind the words, and kissed Lexa again before reaching for a napkin to clean herself up. "You don't have anywhere you have to be tonight?"

"Even if I did," Clarke said, "I would rather be here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still taking prompts for my December Clexathon. Please, send me anything you've got! I can't promise I can do everything, but the more I get the more likely I'll be able to do at least one of the things you want. Details in notes of Ch. 95. Comment, email, contact me on Tumblr! ♥


	98. Lexa

"Let's go home," Clarke said, and it did something to Lexa to know that when she used that word she didn't mean her dorm, and she didn't say 'your house'. She said it like it was _their_ home, together...

Lexa nodded and fought down the lump in her throat with a bite of ice cream, which was beginning to melt and drip down her hand from neglect. She licked it away, ignoring the sticky residue that remained, and got up. 

They finished their cones as they walked, the hands that weren't in use tangling together between them like it was no big deal, like they always held hands like that, and that did something to Lexa, too, and she was like the Grinch when his heart swelled so large all at once that it busted out of its frame. 

She was still struggling to keep her emotions in check when they got to the door. She fumbled with her keys. There weren't that many and yet she still picked the wrong one on the first try. Clarke stopped her, forced her to turn and look. 

Everything else dropped away, and for a second the whole world was just those blue eyes – patient and understanding and full of love like she hadn't seen in a long time, and maybe had never seen because they – she and Costia – had loved each other, but with no real understanding of what that meant, or could mean, and they'd lost the chance to find out whether infatuation could mellow into something deeper, something more, and...

... and this wasn't what she wanted to be thinking about right now. Seeing her father had dragged up the past, but looking into Clarke's eyes grounded her in the present, and kissing her – out in the open and not caring who saw – gave her hope for the future.

"I love you too," she whispered, their lips still brushing. 

"I know," Clarke whispered back. 

She got the right key on the second try, and they went up the stairs, kicking off their shoes. The door was unlocked, which meant Anya was home, and Lexa must have texted her to tell her it was safe to do so but she didn't actually remember doing it. She'd had other things on her mind. 

They went inside, and yes, there was Anya, at the sink washing dishes. 

"I was going to do that," Lexa said a bit sheepishly. "We just went out to ice cream first, but I was going to—"

"Don't worry about it," Anya said, looking over her shoulder. One eyebrow went up. "Hey Clarke."

"Hey," Clarke replied. "If I'd known you were going to be home we would have gotten you ice cream."

"It would have melted by the time you got it here," Anya said. "But thanks for thinking of me. Or thinking about thinking of me." She grinned.

Clarke smiled back, and Lexa looked between them and knew that what Anya had told her earlier was true. If she fell apart now, she wouldn't have to pick up the pieces alone. She wasn't alone. This was her family now. These were the people who mattered. 

Anya turned her attention back to rinsing dishes and putting them in the dishwasher, but the conversation wasn't over. "Dare I ask?" 

Lexa knew she could say no, or later, or something else to put off having the conversation that she knew she wouldn't be able to avoid forever, but what was the point? "It was okay," she said. "We're not good at talking about feelings."

"So you didn't talk?" 

"I didn't say that," Lexa said. "I just said we're not _good_ at it. It was... less of a conversation and more me just telling him how much he had fucked up."

Anya closed the dishwasher, pressing the buttons that would delay its starting until they were safely in bed and wouldn't be disturbed by the noise. "How did he respond to that?"

"He... actually apologized," Lexa said. "At first he just said that he was sorry I felt that way when I told him I felt like he'd abandoned me, and I got pissed at him, because that's not a real apology, that's placing the blame on me for actually _having_ feelings, and it just went downhill from there, until I'd said... not everything I've wanted to say to him my whole life, but I hit the highlights. Then he actually apologized. Said he never meant to hurt me, but he understood that he had, and that his intent and its impact were two different things. So." She shrugged. "It was something. It doesn't change all these years of emotional unavailability, of letting me just figure things out on my own, even if he thought I would be better off that way since I had gotten so good at it." 

She felt Clarke's arms slide around her from behind, felt her chin on her shoulder, and she couldn't see her face but she could imagine that it looked a lot like she had when they'd been out on Easter and Lexa had had to retreat to the bathroom to compose herself, and Clarke had done this same thing. Lexa unhooked Clarke's arms from around her waist, tugging her gently around until they were side by side and she could put an arm around her and nuzzle her cheek against Clarke's hair. 

"Then we went out to ice cream, and he got to meet Clarke," Lexa said.

"How did that go?" Anya asked, at the same time that Clarke said, "You could have warned me." She sounded a little bit annoyed, but also a little bit amused – affectionately exasperated would probably be a good way to describe it. 

"Okay, I guess," Lexa said. "And you're right. I should have warned you." She smiled crookedly at Clarke, silently asking for forgiveness that Clarke probably didn't even really think needed to the granted. "I just... didn't want to make it into a bigger thing than it had to be."

"Instead you got into an argument with him that I had to break up."

"Déjà vu," Lexa said. 

"We're not very good at this meeting the parents thing, are we?"

Lexa smiled. "No, we're not."

"I'm not even going to ask," Anya said. "Did you even tell him that Clarke's your girlfriend? Or did you leave that to him to figure out?" She sighed when Lexa didn't immediately answer. "You're ridiculous sometimes, you know that?"

"I never told him Costia was my girlfriend either," Lexa said, which was quite possibly the lamest excuse ever, and she knew it. "He's not stupid, and he's not blind."

"And I did almost kiss you. Since you didn't warn me."

So maybe she wasn't quite ready to forgive entirely. "If I had, you wouldn't have?" Lexa asked.

"Not unless you said it was okay to do so," Clarke said. "It would have saved the awkwardness of you turning away."

It was only then that it occurred to Lexa that doing so might have upset Clarke. That it might have felt like a rejection when it was never intended to be. She just wasn't big on public displays of affection in general, and in front of her father it was just... awkward. But obviously it had been awkward anyway.

"I'm sorry," Lexa said. She could have said that she hadn't been thinking, that she'd been feeling off-kilter and wrong-footed all evening and she'd just reacted without any thought to the consequences, and she certainly had never meant to upset Clarke in any way, or to make her feel unwanted or rejected or whatever she was feeling. But those were just excuses, and intent had no bearing on impact, and... 

"I know," Clarke said. "It's all right." She leaned in to Lexa, and that more than anything told her that it wasn't just words, that it really was okay. "It's all still new. We're figuring things out as we go along." She paused, then asked, "You seriously never told him that Costia was your girlfriend. Weren't you together for like, two years?"

"About a year and a half," Lexa said. "And no. I never told him. I never sat him down and said, 'By the way, Dad, I'm in love with this girl and we're dating.'"

"But he knew?"

"He figured it out," Lexa said. "When we went to prom together, if not before."

Clarke's eyebrows shot up. "You went to _prom_?"

"It wasn't a big deal," Lexa said, feeling heat rush to her cheeks. "Everyone in our school knew. Some people were jerks about it, but mostly no one cared."

"That's not what I'm talking about," Clarke said. " _You_. Went to _prom_." 

"And I sometimes wear dresses and makeup and heels," Lexa said, rolling her eyes. "We've had this conversation about stereotypes."

"It's not about stereotypes," Clarke said. "It's about clichés. And All-American High School Experiences and... I'm just having a really hard time imagining you not hating every single minute of it."

Lexa snorted. "I said I _went_ ," she pointed out. "I didn't say I enjoyed it." She shifted so that she and Clarke were face-to-face, and moved one hand to her waist, the other holding Clarke's, and she began to move her feet, drawing her into a not-very-adept waltz (not because she didn't know what she was doing but because Clarke didn't). "It was Costia's idea. She wanted to Make A Statement. She was always Making Statements." She pulled Clarke little closer to make it easier for her to follow Lexa's lead. "You went to prom, too."

"Yes, but... I'm me. You're you."

"Meaning?"

"Meaning..." Clarke shook her head. "I don't even know. I guess that you come off as being such a loner, so... anti-establishment, that going through the usual high school rites of passage seems like it ought to be... beneath you."

"I wanted her to be happy," Lexa said. "And like I've told you before, once she got an idea into her head, once she'd decided something was going to happen, it was going to happen, come hell or high water. You had to pick your battles with her, and I decided it wasn't one worth fighting." She shrugged. "It wasn't the _most_ miserable experience I had in high school, anyway."

"What about you, Anya?" Clarke asked, and Lexa had somehow managed to forget she was even in the room. She almost stumbled, but caught herself before any toes could get stepped on. "Did you go to prom?"

"No," Anya said. "I had no use for any of that."

"Come on. Mediocre food, someone getting caught trying to spike the punch and getting kicked out – although really, does anyone have punch anymore? So someone getting caught with a nip or a flask. People breaking up in a spectacularly public fashion. People hooking up... often those same people who just broke up hooking up with other people. And don't even get me started on the after prom parties. How could you not want to be part of that?"

Anya laughed. "Well when you put it that way... I'm even more glad I skipped it."

Clarke laughed too. "I'm sure that _somebody_ has fun at these things... but I kind of get the feeling that most people are just pretending."

"Or really trying to convince themselves that they're having a good time. The people who are actually having fun are probably the ones who actually peak at high school, and it's all downhill from there," Anya pointed out.

"That's a cheery thought," Clarke said. "I guess I'm glad that I was the one who got caught with a flask and kicked out."

Lexa really did stumble this time, and their little dance ground to a halt. "What?!"

Clarke grinned, but there was something a little brittle about it. "Junior prom. It had been less than six months since my dad died. And I wanted to piss my mother off. More than anything, I wanted to piss her off, wanted her to realize that she'd fucked up my life, and that she was a shitty parent because I hadn't done any of these things when he was alive. It was... I was... a mess, but pretending not to be. I almost had myself convinced."

Lexa pulled her into a hug, because she didn't know what to say, and she wasn't sure words would have helped anyway. So she poured it all into the touch, hoping that she could convey somehow that things were better now, that the worst was behind them, that whatever came next they would face it together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still taking prompts... don't make me think of things all on my own, because I can't promise that they won't all be angsty if I do! Details in notes of Ch. 95. Email, Tumblr, comment... you know the drill. ♥


	99. Clarke

Clarke pressed her face into Lexa's neck, breathing her in even as her hair tickled her skin, holding her tight and then tighter as she felt some of Lexa's tension give way, accepting whatever burden Lexa was willing to relinquish, feeling it as a physical weight as Lexa leaned in. 

And then there was another set of arms around both of them, and a lump formed in Clarke's throat. Maybe she was reading too much into things, but she didn't think she was, really. Anya was more than a friend to Lexa – not that Clarke had ever much liked the idea of 'just friends' because it implied that romantic relationships somehow carried more weight and value, which honestly was rarely the case, because your friends stuck with you even as romances formed and fell away. But the intensity of the relationship, the depth of the connection... it was more than she'd ever shared with any of her friends, except maybe Wells, except she'd pushed him away when she needed him most, so probably not.

This was family. They were sisters in arms, after a fashion, with what they'd gone through together. But it went deeper than blood. This was family that you chose, family whose bonds were forged entirely from love and not out of some sense of obligation. 

And now she was part of it. Whatever Lexa was to Anya, she was now wrapped up in that... quite literally, at the moment. She'd been accepted, been tested and proven herself, and now everything that Anya would do for Lexa, she would do for Clarke, too. 

She heard Anya murmur something she couldn't understand to Lexa, and then felt Anya press a kiss to the top of her own head before letting them go. "I would offer dessert, but you've already had it."

"'Stitch is troubled. He needs dessert'," Clarke quipped, and felt Lexa freeze, then pull away just enough to stare at her.

"What did you say?"

"'Stitch is troubled. He needs dessert'?" Clarke blinked. Lexa was looking at her like she'd lost her mind, or like she was speaking in tongues or something. "It's from—"

"I know what it's from," Lexa said, her voice dropping low, barely more than a whisper. Clarke felt her fingers digging into the small of her back. "I just..." She shook her head, blinking hard, and then looked at Clarke and forced a wavering smile. "When I was little, I watched that movie all the time. After my mother died, when I was living with my grandparents, I watched it _constantly_. I identified with Lilo... maybe a little too much. I didn't have anyone like Nani, who would do anything for me, though. I just had my father's parents, who weren't exactly big on affection or understanding. Then my grandfather got sick of me watching it and made it disappear. I was devastated. I cried myself sick – literally sick – and my grandfather didn't ask what was wrong, didn't care why I was upset, he made me clean it up. That's when I really started to learn that it didn't matter what you were feeling, you didn't let it show."

"Your grandfather really _was_ an asshole," Clarke spat, remembering when Lexa had told her about the man saying that what Lexa's mother had told her about the car not going if her seatbelt wasn't fastened was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. "How dare he take away something a kid – one who just lost her mother – takes comfort in? And how dare he punish her for crying about it?"

"Now you know where my dad gets it," Lexa said. "Now you know why he just hides behind that mask of indifference all the time."

"He's not indifferent," Anya said. 

"I said it was a mask, didn't I?" Lexa said. "You don't need to defend him to me, Anya. We _did_ talk. Maybe not a lot, but things were said that needed to be said, and I'm going to try to be better about calling or whatever, and I think he will, too."

Clarke looked at her, because she heard the hesitation in her voice, and maybe it was just a lifetime of wariness about letting herself feel, but maybe it was something more. "Do you _want_ him to?" she asked.

"I don't know," Lexa said. "He's my father." One corner of her mouth quirked. "I would be a pretty big hypocrite after everything I've said about reconciling with your mom if I didn't at least try."

"It's not the same," Clarke said, then realized that she probably shouldn't say anything more, because it was okay for someone to complain about their own parents, but the minute someone else started talking shit about them, it put them on the defensive, forcing them to stick up for them even if they didn't want to. It was just some kind of ingrained human instinct, she thought. No one gets to say anything bad about your parents except you.

"Maybe not," Lexa said, "but he's the parent I have left, so I can at least try."

Clarke nodded. She didn't know what else to say, and maybe Lexa was right. At least she hadn't said what Clarke feared she might, which was that her father was all that she had, because that was obviously not true. And whether Lexa knew it or not, her family, the people who would always have her back, wasn't limited to the people in this room, either. Hell, her _own_ mother would go to bat for her if it came to it, just because she mattered to Clarke.

"That's it," Anya said. "I'm making second dessert."

Rather than retreating to Lexa's room, they took seats at the breakfast bar to keep Anya company while she worked, quickly mixing together a chocolate batter so dark it was almost black. 

"I told him I'm switching majors," Lexa said, as abruptly as she'd delivered the news to her father. Clarke slid her hand over to Lexa's knee and squeezed it. 

"It's official?" Anya said.

"It will be when I do the paperwork on Monday," Lexa said. 

"What'd he say?"

"He said that he thought I'd said I would never follow in his footsteps. I told him that wasn't going to. That I would be better than he was. That I would help people."

"He—"

"I know," Lexa said, waving away what Anya was about to say. "I know. But not always."

"No, not always," Anya acknowledged. 

"I'm confused," Clarke said. "I thought he was in the military. Like, for life."

"He is," Lexa said, a frown forming.

"But he's a lawyer?"

"He's a JAG," Lexa said. "Judge Advocate General. He's a military lawyer."

"Pretty much every job that exists in the civilian world has a military equivalent," Anya explained. "There are military doctors, military nurses, military psychologists, computer techs, mechanics..." She began to mix up something else; Clarke wasn't sure what. "Just because you want to be a soldier – or sailor or airman or marine –"

"Or coast guardsman," Lexa chimed in. "Everyone always forgets the Coast Guard."

"Including the military," Anya said. "I'm not even sure they fall under the same governing body anymore. Anyway, just because you enlist doesn't mean that you don't have other dreams. It doesn't mean that you just want to fight. So many people who enlist do it because it means that they'll get their school paid for afterward. They couldn't ever afford college otherwise."

Clarke knew that, or she'd heard it, but she'd never really thought about it.

"Because he's a JAG, it was unlikely he would ever get deployed into any kind of combat zone," Lexa said. "That's how he could stay in the military and still take care of me on his own."

"I feel like you've lived your life in a whole different world than I did," Clarke said. "A world I barely knew existed, even though it's _right there_."

"You and pretty much everyone else," Anya said. "Don't worry about it."

"I just want to understand," Clarke said. "I feel like an idiot."

"You're not an idiot," Lexa said. "And trust me, kids who have grown up like we did have our own moments of feeling like we're completely out of touch with the world." She shrugged, laid her hand over Clarke's, twining their fingers together. "Just ask if you don't understand something. Whatever it is, we've probably heard it before."

Clarke nodded, but she couldn't think of anything. She felt a little wrung out, and she could only imagine how Lexa must be feeling. She'd only caught the tail end of Lexa's interaction with her father; if they were that intense in public, if they could say so much with so few words, what was it like when they were actually free to say what they wanted?

"I'm going to have to take a couple of summer classes," Lexa said. "And I'll be working at the dojang, and I should probably see about some kind of internship." She propped her elbow on the counter and rubbed her forehead. "It's going to be a long summer."

"Don't worry," Clarke said. "I'll make sure you don't work too hard."

"You're staying?" Lexa asked. 

Clarke nodded. "Octavia and I found a place to sublet, and I got the research assistant position, so I'm definitely staying," she said. "You can't get rid of me that easily."

"I wouldn't want to," Lexa said, and it looked like she was going to say more, but then she closed her mouth. Her eyes said it all, though, everything that she wanted to say but couldn't find the words for, or was too embarrassed to put voice to. Clarke didn't blame her for that, or hold it against her. She knew why Lexa didn't – couldn't – say things that fell easily from other people's tongues. It made it mean so much more when she _did_ say them... but even if she never did, Clarke knew. She understood.

"What are you feelings on camping, Clarke?" Anya asked.

"Uh..." She wasn't sure how to put voice to her feelings about camping – which she'd only done a few times – because she was pretty sure that Anya and Lexa were all for it, and she didn't want to get into a debate.

Anya laughed. "Right," she said. 

"I mean, it's not that I _hate_ it..." Clarke tried. "It's just... being dirty and sweaty and sore and having to pee in the woods isn't exactly my idea of a great time? But maybe in the right company...?"

Lexa squeezed her hand. "I wouldn't want to torture you."

"It wouldn't be _torture_... exactly..." Clarke tried. 

"There are campgrounds," Anya said. "With bathroom facilities."

"Leave her alone," Lexa said. "I'm not going to make her do anything that she doesn't want to do."

Anya looked at her, and something passed between them, an unspoken exchange that didn't take a genius to figure out probably had something to do with Costia. 

"I would be willing to give it another try," Clarke said. "It was a long time ago, and the weather was terrible. Maybe now that I'm older I would like it more."

"Maybe," Lexa said. "But I won't force you."

"If it's something you like," Clarke said, "then I'm willing to try. And even if I don't like it, I promise I won't complain the entire time. I'll just politely decline any future invitations." She smiled, because she didn't want this to be painful or awkward. She just wanted to see Lexa smile.

"Fair enough," Lexa said. "It won't be for a while anyway. You have plenty of time to change your mind."

"I won't," Clarke said. _Because it's you asking, and even if I'm not sure about sleeping on tree roots and sharing my lunch with bugs, I'm sure about you, and that I would do anything for you._

"Molten salted caramel cake," Anya said as she put the pan in the oven. "And I think I know just the thing to watch while we're waiting."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still taking prompts, friends! Deleted scenes, other AUs, alternate POV on existing scenes, canon stuff... anything you want! More details in the notes of Ch. 95. Email, Tumblr, or comment. Don't make me come up with ideas on my own!


	100. Lexa

Before Lexa could even kick off her shoes to step onto the mat, Master Gustus had popped his head out of the office. "Good, I'm glad you're here early," he said. "When you've changed, come into the office."

"Yes sir," she replied automatically, because that was the only answer that was acceptable to give. Although really, she probably could have gotten away with just saying, "Okay," but she'd had other, stricter instructors who expected to be called 'sir' or 'ma'am' in the dojang, even outside of class time, and it had become habit.

She changed quickly and deposited her bag in its usual spot in the corner, in case she needed any of her gear out of it during class. Her nose wrinkled at the smell coming from one of the bags that had been left behind, and she wondered if she ought to mention to Master Gustus that now might be a good time for the annual reminder that as the weather got warmer, everyone was going to sweat more, and it was important to make sure that you were cleaning off your gear after sparring, and washing your uniform, and wearing deodorant, and all of those things that the younger teenage boys seemed to forget. Or maybe they just reveled in their grossness. Whatever the case, it was hard to sneak up on someone when they could smell you coming a mile away.

"Have a seat," Master Gustus said, motioning to the chair in front of his desk. He must have seen something in her face, because he smiled. "You're not in trouble, Lexa," he said, his voice surprisingly gentle for a man of his size. (Although really, in her experience Lexa had found that often the biggest, toughest-looking guys often had the kindest, gentlest hearts, when it came right down to it, and Master Gustus was no exception.)

"I didn't think I was, sir," Lexa said. "That doesn't mean I'm going to like what you're going to say." He raised his eyebrows, and Lexa instantly regretted opening her mouth. She could feel heat rushing to her cheeks and the tips of her ears, and she had to resist the urge to duck her head. "Sorry, sir," she said. 

"Why?"

"That was disrespectful."

He smiled again and shook his head. "It really wasn't. And you don't have to call me sir off the mats."

"Okay," she replied. "What's going on?"

"We have a new student starting today," Master Gustus said. "He'll be in the adult class."

"Okay," she said, the word tipping up slightly at the end, turning it into a question as she waited for him to explain why this was noteworthy. Sure, new students in adult class was a lot rarer than new students in the kids' or juniors' class, but it wouldn't normally warrant him sitting her to down to talk to her about it, even if she was now an assistant instructor.

"He's coming to us from another school," Master Gustus said. "I haven't actually seen him, but my understanding is that he's very good. _Very_ good. But he wanted to quit doing Tae Kwon Do completely. Coming here was the compromise that he and his parents – or father, I guess, I got the impression that his mother would have let him quit – came to."

Lexa frowned. "We're a compromise?"

"The school that he was training at before focused almost exclusively on the sport aspect of things. They were a big tournament school, and they've got a reputation for their sparring."

"A reputation?"

"A good one," Master Gustus clarified. "They're known for producing athletes capable of competing at the national level – and winning."

"Okay," she said, feeling like a broken record, but she wasn't sure where this was all going, and she kind of wished that her instructor would get to the point. "So we're a compromise because that's not our primary focus?"

"Essentially, yes. He was being groomed to be their next big name, pretty much... but he was having a hard time handling that pressure, and getting to the point where he hated something that he used to love. I guess they decided that rather than giving up completely, he could try another school where there was a little bit of a different focus, where he wouldn't have all of that pressure on him, and see how it went."

"You want me to keep an eye on him?" Lexa asked.

"Yes. Just... make him feel welcome. Show him the ropes. If he's as good as they say he is... I just want to make sure that he's getting what he wants out of this. And I'm not sure his parents really know what that is. I'm not sure _he_ knows what that is. I'm hoping that you can help figure that out."

"How can I help figure out something he doesn't know himself?" Lexa asked.

"By working with him. By listening and paying attention. Just do what you normally do. You have good instincts."

"Yes sir," she said, and didn't bother to correct herself. 

"That was all," he said. "You can go ahead and warm up before the madness begins." By which she knew he meant the kids starting to arrive.

Lexa stood up and took a step out of the office, then turned back. "What's his name?" she asked.

"Aden," Master Gustus said, flashing her another smile. "You'll be fine," he added. "I trust you."

_No pressure,_ Lexa thought, but she just forced a tight smile and nodded, and went to go work on a few forms while she still had the mats to herself.

By the time the kids were leaving and the adults starting to arrive, Lexa was already exhausted. Not because she'd done anything particularly strenuous – her job in the juniors class was mostly to monitor to make sure that everyone was doing what they were supposed to be doing, and doing it right, and to hold targets and that kind of thing – but because the kids had been particularly loud and hyper today, and none of them seemed to be able to focus, no matter how many times they were dragged back to the task at hand. She'd seen classes of four- and five-year-olds run more smoothly.

"You look like you've been dragged through the hedgerow backward," Anya commented. 

"Where do you even come up with these things?" Lexa asked, even as she accepted the quick hug that Anya offered. Because apparently they were becoming people who did such things. 

"A lady never tells," Anya replied, and then dodged the swat that Lexa aimed at her midsection, laughing as she headed for the locker room to change.

Lexa turned around and saw a boy standing in the little sitting area, holding a bag emblazoned with a logo that was not theirs. She walked over and bowed off the mat, then offered her hand. "You must be Aden."

He nodded and shook her hand. "Nice to meet you, ma'am," he said.

Lexa winced inwardly. "You can just call me Lexa," she said. "We're not as formal as some schools here. No Miss or Mister, except for instructors. Let me show you where you change." He nodded, so she got him pointed to the men's locker room, and went back to stretching, although she suspected tonight she wasn't going to be getting much of a workout; she would be busy keeping an eye on the new kid. 

When he came back out, she showed him where he could put his bag. "Just do whatever stretching you normally do," she said. "We've still got five minutes before class starts."

He nodded again, and Lexa wondered if he was always this shy, or if he was just nervous because he was in a new place, and being cautious so he didn't rock the boat or do anything that might draw attention to himself. 

Octavia and Lincoln arrived and went to change quickly, and in the minute before class was supposed to start, Lexa quickly made introductions. Aden nodded politely to each of them as they were introduced, and then Master Gustus stuck his head out again and told Anya to start warm-up, and Aden's relief was almost palpable as they started to move, because this, at least, was familiar. She stayed near him most of the time, making sure that any time they needed to choose partners, she was right there so that he only had to turn to find her, and there was no risk of his being the odd one out with only five students there. 

Lexa quickly discovered that if it was Aden's parents who had told Master Gustus that he was good, they hadn't just been saying it out of parental pride. He _was_ good. Fast on his feet and precise, stronger than you'd expect for a boy who wasn't yet very tall, and who looked like a stiff breeze might blow him away, and quick to pick up on things when they started working on some self-defense, which really hadn't been focused on at all at his old dojang. 

"Right hand here, left hand—" Lexa started, but she didn't need to finish. "Yes, you've got it. Good." She smiled at him. "It's not easy, changing schools," she said. "I moved around a lot, so I've been through it more times than I can count. But this is a good one."

"You have to say that," he said, and there was a little bit of a tease in it, but there was also something serious behind the words.

"No," Lexa said. "I don't. If it wasn't a good place, I wouldn't be here."

"Okay," he said, and Lexa wasn't sure if he really believed her, but Master Gustus called for them to rotate, so he moved on to face Anya, and she found herself facing off with Octavia, who grinned. 

"Don't worry," she said. "I'll go easy on you."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a little sh—" Lexa stopped herself, smirking. 

"Once or twice," Octavia said. "A day. Every day of my life." She attacked, and Lexa defended, and they went back and forth like it was a game, which it kind of was because there were no real stakes here, but it didn't stop either of them from taking it seriously. 

"Call Clarke later," Octavia said, as Master Gustus called for them to rotate again. "She's freaking out over finals."

"Already?"

"Yes. Just call her."

"I will." 

When class ended, they all bowed off the mat, and then went to change. Lexa rushed to make sure that she was done before Aden had a chance to slip out. He looked up at her expectantly as she approached him, and it was easy to smile at him, because she wanted him to feel at ease. She wanted this place to become his second home, like it was for her.

She thought about telling him that he'd done a great job, and maybe he needed to hear that, but maybe the words were too expected, and maybe he would think she was just saying them, and the same could be true if she told him how great it was to meet him, so she settled on, "So we'll see you tomorrow?"

"You'll be here?" he asked.

"I plan to be," she said. "Unless something unexpected comes up, I will be."

"Okay," he said. "Thanks for helping me."

"Any time," she said, and meant it. "Have a good night."

"G'night." He ducked out the door and into a waiting car. She watched him as he put his bag in the trunk and slid into the passenger's seat, and she wasn't sure she liked the way he seemed to shrink into himself, as if the man in the driver's seat, probably his father, took up too much space so he had to make himself smaller. But that was a problem for another day. Tonight, she had Clarke to deal with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy 100th chapter! Who knew we would make it this far? (I sure as heck didn't...)
> 
> I hoped to have something special to post for you today along with the regular chapter, but unfortunately, that didn't happen. _But_ tomorrow is the first day of December, which means the first day of my Clexathon! (For which I am still taking prompts, details in the notes of Ch. 95, please please please...) Because not everything is connected to this story, they won't be posted as part of the story, so keep an eye on my author page for new additions!


	101. Clarke

Clarke could feel her phone vibrating somewhere under the pile of books and papers strewn across her bed, but she couldn't find it. She scrambled through, shoving things to the floor because maybe it was Octavia needing a ride after all, or maybe it was her mom having some kind of emergency, and she couldn't risk not answering for either of those.

She finally found it, swiping across the screen just in time for the message to pop up that she had one missed call. From Lexa. Goosebumps raced over her arms, standing the hair on end, and probably it was nothing... but what if it wasn't? What if she needed something? What if something had happened?

She didn't wait to find out if she was going to leave a voicemail, just called her back... but of course it just went to Lexa's voicemail, and as she was starting to leave a message her own phone beeped, signaling that _she_ had a message, and it all would have been comical if she wasn't already so frustrated she wanted to scream, or cry, or both.

She hung up and checked the message.

_"Hi Clarke. I just wanted to call and check in, see how you are. I heard that you were a little stressed."_

Damn it, Octavia.

_"Call me back when you get this."_ A pause, and then softer, _"I love you."_

The words sank in like water into parched earth, and Clarke took the first real deep breath she'd gotten all evening (or at least it felt that way). She decided that she would forgive Octavia for meddling... at least this time. She poked the button to return the call, and Lexa picked up halfway through the first ring.

"Hey," she said. "I hope I didn't wake you up or something."

"No," Clarke said. "You didn't wake me."

"How are you?"

Clarke sighed. _Better now that I'm talking to you,_ she thought, but the sentiment was too sappy for them, and she could just imagine Lexa rolling her eyes if she said it. "A little stressed, like you said."

"Is there anything I can do?" Lexa asked. 

"Not really," Clarke said. "I'm just... trying to figure out how I'm going to get everything done. I don't know why everyone waits until the very end to have everything due. You would think they could at least make an effort to space things out."

"That would require them to actually consider the fact that you have other classes and responsibilities," Lexa pointed out. "Something that they aren't necessarily good at. Also, with gen ed classes, there are people from so many different majors it's kind of impossible to coordinate, because how could they know what other professors you might be dealing with, and what kind of workload it might entail?"

"Don't use your logic on me," Clarke said, exasperated but amused, because of course Lexa was right.

"I'm sorry," Lexa said, but Clarke knew that she really wasn't. "You made it through the end of last semester," she pointed out. "You'll make it through this one."

"Last semester was easy," Clarke said. "I'm pretty sure that in the classes I was taking the professors all knew that they were dealing with rooms full of first semester freshman, and they went a little bit easy on us. This semester... if they know, they don't care. Or they figure that since we survived last semester, they can put on more pressure. I don't know. It just _feels_ different."

"You know that if there's anything I can do to help, I will," Lexa said. "Just because Finn is gone doesn't mean I don't still have your back, in whatever way you need."

"There's nothing you can do," Clarke said. "Not unless you can create more hours in the day."

A soft laugh. "No... but I can help you organize the ones that you have. If you want." Lexa sounded almost shy about it.

"No," Clarke said. "No, it's fine. It's all right. I'll be okay."

"The more you say it, the less I believe it, Clarke," Lexa said.

_The more I say it, the less **I** believe it,_ Clarke thought. "I'll be okay," she repeated. She would, because she had to be. Failure wasn't an option. It never had been, and it never would be. 

Silence on the other end of the line, and Clarke wondered if she'd upset Lexa somehow. Saying that she would be okay wasn't a lie, but it wasn't exactly the truth, either, and she knew how Lexa felt about people saying things they didn't mean.

"Do you have anything that's due tomorrow?" Lexa asked, just when the silence had started to get uncomfortable. 

"No," Clarke said. 

"Come over. Or I'll come to you."

"It's a school night," Clarke said... and then realized how ridiculous that sounded.

"So call your mom and ask her if it's okay," Lexa teased. "I already asked Anya and she says you can, but just this once."

Clarke laughed. She couldn't help it. Once again, Lexa had a point. They had fallen into a pattern of only spending nights together on weekends, but there was no real reason for it to be that way. They weren't children; they didn't need permission to sleep over somewhere. They didn't even need a ride to get there; they could be their own ride, or walk. "It's almost tempting to do that," Clarke said. "Just to see what she would do."

"It's only 8:30. She probably isn't asleep yet," Lexa said, and Clarke could hear the grin in her voice. "On the other hand, do you _really_ want to ask you mother if it's okay to go spend the night with your girlfriend?"

Clarke wrinkled her nose as she realized the places that that was likely to make her mom's mind go. "On second thought..."

"Exactly," Lexa said. "So you'll have to give yourself permission."

"I have class early on Wednesdays," Clarke said. 

"And I get up and run almost every morning," Lexa said. "When I text you to say good morning, that's _after_ I've gotten up, gone for a run, and showered. So don't worry about waking me up earlier than I need to; that's not going to happen."

"Oh," Clarke said. She knew that, of course, but she hadn't really thought about it. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure," Lexa said. "You know I won't sleep well knowing that you're stressing out all on your own."

"You might not sleep well with me stressing out nearby, either," Clarke pointed out. 

"But I'll have the opportunity to try to find ways to relieve that stress," Lexa countered. "I've got a dance party mix all loaded on my phone, just in case."

Clarke's eyes flooded with tears; it was ridiculous how much of relief it was to hear that, to know that there was someone else who not only wanted to look out for her well-being, but was willing to do something completely silly to achieve it. "I need to leave a note for Octavia."

"Then you'll come over?"

"Then I'll come over." 

"If you want, you can bring your syllabi with you," Lexa said. "We can try to figure things out together."

"You don't—"

"I know," Lexa said. "I want to."

"Okay," Clarke said. "It might take a little bit longer."

"I'm not going anywhere."

The words landed like a stone in water, sending ripples through Clarke, and she knew it was true, knew that Lexa meant it, not just for tonight, but for... maybe not forever, but for as long as Clarke wanted her to be there. 

"I'll be there soon," Clarke said, and ended the call. She sorted through everything that had piled up on her bed and desk, finding her syllabi and any printouts she had of finals assignments that weren't already outlined in the syllabus, and shoved the textbooks and notebooks she would need for her classes the next day into her backpack. She grabbed a separate bag for pajamas and a change of clothes... and it occurred to her that life would be a lot easier if she just left a few things at Lexa's, just in case. But that would probably be pushing too far, too fast, and she didn't want to freak Lexa out by invading her space.

She left a note for Octavia, telling her where she would be, even though she wasn't actually sure her roommate would be returning. _She_ didn't have any weirdness in her head about spending the night with her boyfriend on school nights, and Clarke had seen less of her lately as a result. On the other hand, she knew that Octavia was just as stressed about finals as she was; she was just better at hiding it. And who was she to judge how she dealt with that stress?

She shoved her bags in the backseat of her car, and the drive seemed longer than it really was, probably just because now that she was on her way, she was anxious to get there.

She parked next to Anya, and when she got to the door she didn't even need to ring the bell, because Lexa was already waiting for her. They went upstairs and Clarke kicked off her shoes. 

"Hey Clarke," Anya said, poking her head out of the kitchen. "Chocolate chip or snickerdoodles?"

"What?"

"Or oatmeal raisin, I guess, but I don't think we have raisins, because no one likes them. So they would just be oatmeal. I could do oatmeal jam bars. Or, no, ginger molasses thumbprint cookies with jam."

"Do I even need to answer?" Clarke asked softly.

Lexa smiled and shook her head. "I don't think so," she said. "She's going to do what she's going to do. She's stress-baking."

"Are you the only person who _isn't_ having anxiety over finals?" Clarke asked. "Because you seem to be pretty calm and composed about all of this." 

Lexa shrugged. "I have to be," she said, then frowned slightly. "I mean I'm not having anxiety, or at least I'm not having as much anxiety, because I've been planning ahead for them since just after midterms."

"Since midterms?" Clarke had heard of people who were super organized and on top of things, but that seemed a little extreme. 

"I have to be organized," Lexa said. "If I'm not..." Her forehead furrowed. "It's easier if I just show you." 

"Okay...?" Clarke really wasn't sure where this was going. She could only assume that there was some connection to Costia in all of this, because why else would Lexa have suddenly gotten all awkward about it? 

"I'll be right back." Lexa went into her room and came back with her laptop, a folder, and Moleskine notebook. She sat down next to Clarke on the sofa and opened up the laptop, quickly typing in a password. Her home screen popped up – some kind of nature scene of mountains and trees – and over it was multi-colored sticky notes. Not actual paper ones, but digital ones. Clarke had seen the program on her computer, but she'd never used it. She then opened up the folder and pulled out a sheet broken down into a grid, and flipped open the Moleskine, which also had various multi-colored boxes drawn in. 

"This is how I'm not panicking," Lexa said. "Because believe me, this time last year I was exactly where you are. I was overwhelmed and trying to figure out a way to make sure that everything got done on time, but it seemed like every time I thought I had a handle on things, I would remember something I'd forgotten. Even after finals were over and I was home, for almost a week afterward I would wake up in a panic, thinking I'd forgotten something or overslept and missed something." 

She picked up the notebook, flipping through the pages absently, then set it down again. "Then Costia died, and everything fell apart, and I just... shut down. I was functioning on a very basic level, thanks to Anya, but then all of a sudden I was on a plane to Australia, and I had to figure things out fast, because I was about to spend four months halfway around the world with no support system. I knew I had to do everything in my power to appear normal, to _be_ normal, because if I could do that, then... maybe I could make it true. Maybe everything I'd been told was a lie. But the thing about being that deeply in denial is that it uses up _a lot_ of your mental resources. I had to find ways to compensate."

"So you came up with this?" Clarke asked. She wasn't even sure what _this_ was, but she assumed that Lexa would explain. 

"Pretty much," Lexa said. She picked up the grid. "This is a week. It's everything that I have to get done, broken down by day and by category. Some of it is really basic, but at the time, I needed it to be. If I didn't specifically write down that I needed to eat a meal, it probably wouldn't happen. Now some of it is a little bit overkill, but it's just become habit. So this is the big picture. Or the medium picture. The big picture is here." She popped up a browser and went to the tab where Google Calendar was open. Again, lots of different colors filled the screen. "I've got a calendar for each class, and one for Tae Kwon Do. Actually, two for Tae Kwon Do now – one for classes that I'm taking and one for classes I'm helping teach. Then there's the personal one – that's where various other appointments and deadlines go. I use that to create the weekly, and the weekly feeds the daily." She minimized the browser so that the sticky notes showed again. "Each category on the grid is a color of sticky note, and each day I make a sticky note for each task, and delete them as I do them. It's very satisfying, watching things actually disappear." She smiled, and Clarke smiled back, but if she was being honest, her head was spinning a little. It all seemed pretty cumbersome and hard to maintain, but then, if she'd developed the system because otherwise she wouldn't be able to remember even basic things like eating, maybe it needed to be. 

"And if anything doesn't get done, then I know I need to move it to a different day of the week," Lexa said. "And this," she picked up the Moleskine, "is where I keep track of what I actually did. Because as much as I like watching my desktop get clearer and clearer, I also needed to be able to go back sometimes and see what I'd actually accomplished, either because I forgot whether I'd done something or not, or because I needed concrete evidence that yesterday had happened, and the day before, and the day before." She smiled wryly, then set the notebook down. "At some point I may pare down the system, but for now it's what works."

"I'm glad that it helped," Clarke said. She wasn't sure what else to say. A part of her mind was still suck on what Lexa had said about being in denial. Had she really not believed that Costia was dead? At what point had it finally sunk in? 

"I know it wouldn't for everyone," Lexa said. "Don't think—"

"I don't," Clarke said. 

Lexa looked at her, and Clarke found herself lost in her eyes, searching for answers to questions she didn't know how to ask. If Lexa was aware, though, she gave no indication. "So I guess the question is, do you want me to help you to just forget it for the night, or do you want me to help you sort through it? I'm good either way."

Clarke put her thoughts aside; there would always be time later if it still felt important. "I think I could use all the help I can get."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The month of Clexa has begun! On regular chapter days, there will just be the chapter, but every other day there will be some sort of bonus story!
> 
> Anything that actually happens in the Where There Is A Flame-verse will get posted as part of the series, which you can [subscribe to here](http://archiveofourown.org/series/546589) if you want to receive notifications when anything having to do with that world posts.
> 
> Everything else I will post to a series I have creatively named Clexathon, which can be [subscribed to here](http://archiveofourown.org/series/598180). Or you can just keep checking my author page. Whatever works best for you. I will also be posting them to Tumblr
> 
> Still taking prompts, so if there's any story bits of story you want to see, let me know! The 100-verse only, but can be this world, or canon, or another AU. It doesn't have to be Clexa, but you can probably tell which characters I like writing from this story. I can't promise I will write everything, but the more ideas I have, the more likely you'll get something you want! Email eternaleponine [at] gmail, Tumblr ironicsnowflake, or comment!


	102. Lexa

"Let's see what you've got." Lexa set her own stuff aside, a little self-conscious about having shown someone else the system she'd had to develop just to be able to pretend that she was a functional human being. There was a part of her that wondered if it was maladaptive at this point, if she was clinging to it when she didn't need it anymore, like it had become some kind of crutch but the pain that caused the limping had become psychosomatic.

She didn't _have_ to do it anymore, but she worried that if she stopped, she would just fall apart again. Maybe over the summer, when she had less that she was responsible for...

But right now it wasn't about her. Right now it was about figuring out a system that worked for Clarke, that would get her through the next few weeks, and maybe help her keep on top of things over the next few years, because things certainly weren't going to get any easier.

Clarke handed her a fistful of syllabi and other papers. "This is everything."

Lexa flipped through them and nodded. "Step One: Don't try and tackle it all at once. One at a time." She set aside the pile and just pulled the top sheet from it, reading over it quickly. "Actually, first we need Step Zero: Create a calendar. We'll do it on paper first, and then if you want to put it online or in your phone, you can." She flipped open her laptop again and found a blank calendar to print out, getting up to retrieve the page from the wireless printer that Anya's friend had left behind, and that they were both endlessly grateful for. 

"Okay, _now_ Step One," Lexa said, and handed the sheet back to Clarke. "Tell me what we need to write down."

Slowly, they worked through everything, with Clarke going through the pages and finding relevant dates and assignments and Lexa writing them down. Once they could see where everything fell, they figured out what steps each of the assignments required to be completed, and whether they involved other people (like the Military History final project that she had with Raven and Octavia, but that was the only one she _wasn't_ worried about, because they'd been working on it regularly since it was assigned; apparently Raven was very methodical about things) or whether it was all on Clarke. Luckily, most of the assignments were individual, which made it easier to schedule because she didn't have to coordinate anything with anyone else.

Once the assignments were broken down into steps, with a guess made at how long each step would take, Lexa helped Clarke break things down into what needed to be done on any given day, making sure to add cushions of time in case something didn't get done on its designated day, and also to build in time for Clarke to rest and relax. 

"I know it probably doesn't _look_ any less overwhelming," Lexa said, "but there's no more to do in any given day than there are hours."

Clarke nodded. "Thank you," she said. 

"You would have gotten it done anyway," Lexa told her. "I know you would have. But maybe this way you'll keep a little bit more of your sanity intact in the process."

She nodded again, but she was looking over the pages like she was trying to figure out how it was possible that following these steps would actually make her more sane, and not less. 

Lexa reached over and gently pulled them from her fingers, taking her hand and squeezing it. "You said you don't have anything that's due tomorrow?"

"No," Clarke said. 

"And we didn't write anything in that needs to be done tonight."

"No," she repeated.

"How about now we move on to option number two: I help you forget about all of this for a little while."

Clarke turned to look at her, her eyes gone slightly wide, and Lexa smiled. It wasn't meant as a suggestion, or at least not a lewd one, but if Clarke wanted to take it that way, she wasn't going to object. 

But apparently Anya had other plans. "Cookies are ready," she announced, bringing a plate over. "I thought you might need to refuel."

"Thanks," Lexa said. "How altruistic of you."

"I stress-bake," Anya said. "I don't need to stress-eat on top of it."

Clarke snorted. "Like you have anything to worry about," she said, looking Anya and her mile-long legs up and down. 

"Neither do you," Anya said, frowning slightly.

"I know," Clarke said, but Lexa didn't know if she was saying it because she knew that that's what Anya wanted to hear, or because she genuinely believed it. She certainly hoped that it was the latter, because as far as Lexa was concerned, Clarke's body was perfect. It was soft in places, and strong in others, and the fact that she wasn't waging war against her curves (that Lexa knew of...) meant she hadn't fallen into the trap of believing that the only way to be beautiful was to strive to stop taking up too much space.

Because seriously, how the hell could someone be a size 0? If you were a zero, you didn't exist, or at least that's how it should be, logically. But there was no place for logic in women's fashion, and Lexa found herself endlessly frustrated when she had to go shopping because the sizes made no sense. There was no rhyme or reason to them, and no consistency, just randomly assigned numbers that way too many women used to measure their worth.

Lexa picked up a cookie and bit into it viciously, and Clarke looked at her, a frown forming between her eyebrows. "What did that cookie ever do to you?" she teased.

She forced a sheepish smile. "Nothing. Just thinking."

"Penny for your thoughts?" Clarke asked. 

"Is that all they're worth to you?" It was meant to be a joke, but it came out flat.

"No," Clarke said. "But unless you take debit cards, it's all I've got." 

"I was just thinking about beauty standards and how bullshit they are," Lexa said. 

Clarke opened her mouth to respond, then closed it again, like she'd reconsidered what she was going to say, or maybe whatever it was hadn't been fully formed, and she'd stopped herself before starting something she didn't know how to finish. Finally she said, "I didn't mean anything by it." She picked up a cookie and took a bite, chewing slowly. "I love my body. I'm happy in it. It does what I need it to do, gets me where I need to be, and I look in the mirror and I don't see anything about it that I want to change. This is who I am. Maybe I could be a little more active, but I'm not going to beat myself up about the fact that I'm not the kind of girl that loves going to the gym or jogging. But I'm also human, and not immune to the brainwashing we're all given pretty much from birth about how we're supposed to feel about ourselves if we don't fit into a mold, and that we're supposed to be jealous of other women who more closely fit that mold. You've never said anything that you realized as soon as you said it that it wasn't really coming from you, but from the store of stock phrases that media has taught you?"

"I probably have," Lexa admitted. "I know I've definitely _thought_ things like that, even if I didn't say them."

Clarke nodded. "It takes time to undo all that. Maybe it's not possible to completely undo it, unless and until society begins to remake itself." She nudged Lexa's knee with her own. "Thank you for the cookies, Anya," she said. "They're delicious."

"You're welcome," Anya said. "And if you decide that you do want to be more active, there are plenty of things that aren't just going to the gym and jogging. I was thinking about actually taking a group of students out to one of the battlefields, which is partially academic and partially just a lot of walking, but sometimes it actually helps you remember things. Like it becomes part of your muscle memory."

"I'll think about it," Clarke said. "Talk to Octavia and Raven. Although Raven might not be up for walking long distances."

"Maybe not," Anya said. "But she might be tougher than you give her credit for."

"We should start planning a hiking trip for after finals," Lexa said. "Before summer classes and internships and everything start."

"We should," Anya agreed. "Although if you're looking to actually camp, a lot of places don't open for that until after Memorial Day. I'll see what I can find next time I need a break."

Lexa nodded, and took another cookie. Clarke was right; the cookies _were_ delicious. It occurred to her then that somewhere along the line food had stopped being simply fuel to get her body through the day, and had become something to be enjoyed again, but she wasn't sure when exactly that had happened. Maybe when she'd gone out for Indian food with Clarke. That was the first time she could remember actually paying attention to what she was putting into her body. Or maybe it was the crème brûlée. 

It was tied to Clarke somehow, as everything seemed to be tied to Clarke somehow, and she wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad one. It was better than everything being tied to Costia, anyway. It had to be. Anchoring herself to something that was gone and never coming back, something that inevitably dragged her down into the darkness, had never been healthy. Now she fixed herself to the light, to the hope and possibility of the future... a future that she actually believed now wouldn't be spent miserable and alone.

And maybe Clarke wouldn't always be there; maybe she wasn't her happily ever after, her forever. Maybe there was no such thing. But being with her... From the moment Clarke had barged into her room like she belonged there... it had sort of felt like she did. Like some part of her had looked at Clarke and recognized her, like some part of her that had been hibernating in the darkness of her soul had woken up, blinked, and said, 'Oh, it's you.'

Her eyes stung with a sudden rush of tears, and she blinked hard, trying to clear them. This wasn't what she needed right now, wasn't what any of them needed right now, and she quickly excused herself to go to the bathroom, figuring it would buy her at least a couple of minutes to compose herself before one of them came to check on her.

She sat down on the lid of the toilet seat and buried her face in her hands, forcing herself to breathe deeply, in and out, until the ache in her chest began to subside, the lump in her throat to melt away. Why did feelings have to be so complicated, so messy? Why did it have to be possible to feel like your heart was breaking and mending all at once? 

But the answer wasn't going to be found here, hiding in the bathroom alone. The answer was out there, with the people who loved her, who made her believe that healing was possible. The ones who bandaged her wounds and kissed them to take the pain away, if not literally than metaphorically. She wiped her eyes, checking in the mirror to make sure her face wasn't red and puffy, flushed the toilet for cover even though Anya and Clarke weren't dumb and probably knew she hadn't actually gotten to go anyway. She washed her hands and dried them, and went back to where Clarke and Anya were talking about something class-related, and sat back down.

Clarke took her hand as soon as she sat down, squeezing it even as she kept talking to Anya, and she didn't need to say anything for Lexa to understand the question: _Are you okay?_

She squeezed back. _I'm okay._

A little while (and a plate of cookies later) Anya stood up. "I'm going to go see if I can sleep," she said. "You two have a good night."

Lexa stood up, taking a step toward her, awkward and uncertain because this wasn't who they were except when it was, but she owed Anya more than she could ever repay, and it was only now that she was starting to wonder what the cost had been to her friend. She'd given up a whole summer to be there for Lexa, and what had Lexa ever given her in return?

Anya turned and put her arms around her, pulling her in and holding her tight. "I'm sorry that you felt like you had no support system," Anya whispered. "That's not what I wanted. I just didn't know what else to do. I was afraid of what your father might decide was best for you if we – which pretty much meant I – didn't come up with something, and fast. I wasn't sending you away because I didn't want to deal with you anymore. I tried—"

"I know," Lexa said. "Anya, I know. You were taking care of me the best you could. You were there for me even from halfway around the world. That wasn't what I meant. Please don't think—"

"Okay," Anya said. She stroked Lexa's hair, her hand cupping the back of her head for a moment, and then she let her go. "I'll see you in the morning."

Clarke looked at Lexa once Anya was gone, a question in her eyes that didn't make it to her lips. Lexa just held out her hand. "Bed doesn't sound like a bad idea," she said. 

"No," Clarke agreed. "It doesn't." 

They left all of their school stuff – laptops and notebooks and lists and calendars – on the coffee table, Clarke pausing only to grab the other bag she'd brought, even though she was pretty sure its contents were likely going to be superfluous, and they retreated to Lexa's room.


	103. Clarke

"Lay down," Lexa said, as soon as the door was closed. 

Clarke didn't argue, and soon Lexa had her shirt off, and rolled her onto her stomach, straddling her hips as she smoothed lotion down her back in slow strokes. Her fingers found every tense, sore, knotted place, and Clarke found herself biting her lip against the waves of emotion that flooded through her as everything released.

She closed her eyes and breathed through it, her mind wandering back over the evening, and snagging again on something that Lexa had something, something that hadn't made sense... or had, but not in any kind of good way. 

"Lexa?"

"Mmm?" 

The heel of one hand pressed into her lower back, and Clarke bit back a groan. "Something you said earlier..." She hesitated, because this moment was good, and she didn't want to break it. She didn't want to upset Lexa, and not just because she might stop what she was doing.

"What?" Lexa asked, seeming unbothered, but maybe she was just covering it well. Clarke knew that she could mask a lot in her voice, and without the cues from her face it was almost impossible to tell.

"About thinking that if you just tried hard enough... you could make what happened to Costia not be true. About being in denial."

This time Lexa did stop, her hands going still, but she didn't move away, and after a second she started kneading Clarke's back again. She sighed softly. "It depended on the day," she said. "It depended on the moment. And which were the good ones and which were the bad ones depended on your perspective." She leaned forward a little, working down the backs of Clarke's arms and back up again. "At the time, I would have thought that the good days were the ones where I was sure that she was just mad at me, and that's why I hadn't heard from her. And there was the time zone problem, and maybe her parents were blocking her somehow. Maybe we were over, but I could be okay with over, if I had to be."

Clarke flinched. She couldn't help it. "What were the bad days?"

"The bad days were the ones that I was pretty sure that what I'd been told was right, because Anya wouldn't lie to me, and my dad, whatever else he might do, wouldn't either. Which meant that she was gone, that she was dead, and I was alone." Clarke heard her breath catch, heard her swallow. "So... basically the opposite of what was healthy. But... I didn't know how else to deal. I felt like I'd lost half of myself. Maybe more than half. I felt gutted, hollowed out, and so I filled myself up with false hope just to be able to make it through the day. At night, though... at night I usually couldn't. I drank more than I should have to get through the worst of them, which wasn't healthy either, but better than the alternative."

"What was the alternative?" Clarke asked, not sure she wanted to know.

"Paddling out into the ocean and never turning back," Lexa said. 

Clarke tried to roll over, and after a second Lexa slid off of her so that she could, and they were face to face, and Clarke shook her head, and kissed her roughly, and shook her head again. "No," she said. "Lexa, no."

"No," Lexa agreed, taking her hands, kissing the knuckles of one, then the other, her thumbs rubbing circles in her palms. "I wouldn't now."

"If you even think about it—" But Clarke couldn't finish the thought, because she wasn't sure if she meant it as a threat or a plea. 

"I won't," Lexa said. "I don't. Clarke." She waited for Clarke to look up, to meet her eyes. "I promise."

Clarke kissed her again, because she had no words to answer that with, and Lexa let go of her hands and wrapped her arms around her instead, holding her close until Clarke could breathe normally again. 

She thought maybe she should let it go, but there was still one question that she needed answered. Or maybe not _needed_ , but wanted. "When... when did it change?" she asked. "When did you realize...?"

Lexa's fingers stroked her temple, tucking back a lock of her hair behind her ear. "Not that long ago," she said softly. "After it happened, I wouldn't say her name. I wouldn't let anyone else say her name. Back in February, I thought I saw her. I _really_ thought I saw her, but then she disappeared. I came home and told Anya, and she sat me down and made me say, out loud, that Costia was dead. It was more painful than when I first got the news... because I actually had to face it, but I think also because I was finally ready to face it, and maybe to start to let go, to move on... and that was terrifying. And felt like a betrayal. But for the first time it felt like if I moved, maybe I was moving _toward_ something, and not just running away."

Clarke brushed her nose against Lexa's. "What were you moving toward?" she asked.

Lexa laughed, just a soft exhalation and the faintest hint of a smile. "Are you really asking?"

"Yes."

"You," Lexa said. "I was moving towards you. Fighting it every step of the way sometimes... but here we are."

"Here we are," Clarke agreed.

* * *

_I could get used to this,_ Clarke thought, even before she opened her eyes. _I could totally get used to this._

Lexa had rolled from her side to her stomach, and Clarke's arm was draped across her back. She traced a finger down her spine, following the lines of her tattoo, and felt her shift and stretch under the touch, arching her back like a cat being stroked. 

"Good morning, Clarke," she said, her voice slightly muffled by the pillow.

"Good morning, Lexa," she replied, pushing herself up on one elbow to lean over her, brushing aside a cascade of tangled hair to press a kiss to the nape of her neck, smiling at the soft sound that she made in response. 

Lexa rolled over and smiled up at her, and yes, she could get used to _that_ , too. _Damn_ , she was beautiful, especially in the filtered light of early morning... but she would probably think that about any lighting at any time of day. She was beautiful even when Clarke couldn't see her...

"Come with me," Lexa said, seemingly out of nowhere, but Clarke assumed it was the end of the line of some train of thought that she wasn't privy to.

"Come with you where?" Clarke asked. 

Something flickered in Lexa's eyes, some thought, some words she wanted to say but didn't, but they didn't seem to upset her, so Clarke didn't ask. "Out," she said. 

"Are you being deliberately vague to try and get me to agree without knowing what I'm agreeing to, or do you actually think I have some kind of psychic powers to know what you're talking about without you having to say it?" Clarke asked, fighting back a smile.

"Guilty," Lexa said, without specifying which one. "Come running with me." She lifted a hand to press a finger over Clarke's lips. "I know you said that you don't really like exercise, but you also said that you maybe wanted to be more active, and—"

"That's not exactly what I said," Clarke interrupted. "I said that maybe I _should_ be more active, not that I _wanted_ to be."

Lexa seemed to deflate a little, and Clarke could see her face shift as she bit the inside of her lip or cheek or something, maybe holding back on what she wanted to say in response, or maybe just... She didn't know. She hadn't meant to upset her, but at the same time, just because something was good for her didn't mean she had any interest in it, and people who loved exercise were always getting on the case of people who didn't, telling them how if they just _tried_ it they might discover that they _liked_ it, and she didn't want to go there.

"Okay," Lexa said after a moment. "You don't mind if I go?" It was only sort of a question.

"I don't mind," Clarke said, because that was the right answer. The truth was that she did mind, a little, because she didn't want to lose this moment just yet, but the truth _there_ was that it was already lost, and they hadn't even really been in it together in the first place. 

"I'll be back in a little while," Lexa said, and got up and dressed, her back turned to Clarke, and she couldn't tell if Lexa was pissed or disappointed or if she was actually okay with it, and she wanted to ask but she was pretty sure that Lexa would just shut her down, tell her that it was fine... Except she always said that she didn't say things she didn't mean, which meant that maybe she _wouldn't_ say it was fine, maybe she would tell the truth, and Clarke didn't know what that truth would be.

It was too early in the morning for all of this. She sat up, rubbing her eyes. "Why?" she asked.

Lexa turned as she tugged a shirt on. "Why what?"

"Why do you want me to come with you?" Clarke asked. "I'll only slow you down."

Lexa actually seemed to be considering this, and the silence stretched for several seconds. "Sometimes I just wake up antsy," she said, "and ready to go. But then there you are, with the sun in your hair and the most beautiful eyes I've ever seen and how can I want to leave that? I just wanted to keep you with me a little longer."

"I'm not going anywhere," Clarke said. "I would still be here when you came back, if you wanted me to be."

Lexa nodded, which wasn't actually an answer. Hell, it was barely a nod. Clarke thought maybe that was all she was going to get, and she felt anger, frustration, irritation, whatever you wanted to call it beginning to boil up, without really knowing why, or whether it was actually directed at Lexa. "I don't want you to do anything you don't want to do," Lexa said finally. "I'm not trying to turn you into anyone that you're not."

"Okay," Clarke said, and maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't. 

"For me it helps relieve stress," Lexa added. "Just like having all of my organizational systems helps me relieve stress. For someone else it might be too much. It might cause them stress, trying to maintain it. If this isn't for you, that's fine. I understand. I just thought I would offer."

"Thank you," Clarke said, more for the explanation than the offer. It was genuine enough that she actually wondered if maybe Lexa was right, and maybe it would help. Maybe it wouldn't, and maybe she would hate it... but how would she know unless she tried? Octavia hadn't seemed all that sporty, and now she was really hardcore into Tae Kwon Do... but then maybe it was just that Clarke didn't see that side of her, and she'd always been that way. 

And if most of her group of friends was all into this fitness thing, would she always be being left out if she didn't try? It wasn't that she was completely out of shape; she wasn't. She took the stairs and she walked more often than she drove. She just didn't usually push herself too hard physically. When she wanted to challenge herself, it was academically. Intellectually.

Maybe it was time for a change. Maybe she needed to diversify her interests. She and Lexa had talked once about her getting back into art. She had her research assistant position for the academic side of things, but that wasn't going to take up all of her time, and she didn't want it to. She wanted the opportunity to do other things, to be something other than a student for a few months. 

"Okay," she said finally, like Lexa had been wheedling and she was tired of hearing it and giving in just to shut her up. Which she wasn't.

Lexa frowned. "Okay?"

"I'll come," Clarke said. "But I know I'm going to slow you down."

Whatever she was about to suffer was worth it (probably, maybe she should hold off judgment until she was actually out there...) for the way that Lexa's eyes lit up. "We can take it easy," Lexa said. "It's not always about running as fast as you can."

"One problem," Clarke said. "I don't have sneakers with me. Or anything else that would be considered workout gear."

"I can lend you some stuff," Lexa said, "but yeah, the sneakers are a problem."

"Unless we went by my dorm first," Clarke said. "I can drive my car back there and park, and then we can jog back here?" Which was a fairly long way, she realized, and what the hell was she getting herself into?

"I've never been to your dorm," Lexa said.

"That's true," Clarke said. "And now probably isn't the best time, considering that Octavia is probably still asleep."

"If she's not with Lincoln," Lexa pointed out.

"Right. But... does that work?"

"That works," Lexa said. "I'll go tell Anya."

"Is she—?" 

"Tell her to go without us," Lexa said. "Be right back." 

Clarke got dressed in the pajamas she'd never actually put on the night before, because there was no point in getting dressed in the clothes she'd actually planned to wear for the rest of the day when she was just going to change back out of them again in a few minutes, and once Lexa came back, they went to Clarke's car. 

Since the question of Octavia was still unanswered, Clarke went up to her room alone, leaving Lexa outside stretching while she went upstairs. She twisted her key in the lock as quietly as she could, and was glad of it when she saw the lump under the blankets in Octavia's bed. She rummaged through her drawers, finding what she was looking for pushed all the way to the back, and dressed quickly. The last thing she needed was Octavia waking up and asking what she was doing, because she would never hear the end of it.

She almost made it out without being noticed. Almost. But then she couldn't find her sneakers and had to go into the back of her closet, and in doing so got tangled in some of the things hung up, and when she tried to disentangle herself she pulled the hangers down, and she came out swearing and covered in clothes... to find not Octavia but Lincoln staring at her.

She managed not to scream. Barely. She just dumped the clothing on the bed and ran out (which probably made the whole thing look even more ridiculous, but she was past the point of caring; maybe Lincoln would think that he'd been dreaming, that he'd imagined it all) with her sneakers clutched in her hand. 

Lexa's eyebrows went up as she sat on the little ledge in front of the building to pull on her shoes. "Everything okay?" she asked.

"Peachy," Clarke grumbled. "Let's go."

"When was the last time you ran?" Lexa asked as she started walking (to warm up, Clarke assumed). 

"Gym class," Clarke said. "So... roughly a year ago."

"Better than never," Lexa said. "Don't push yourself too hard. If you need to slow down or take a break, just tell me." 

"I will," Clarke said, matching her pace even though Lexa had a couple of inches on her, and they fell into step, and when Lexa shifted from a walk to a jog, she still managed to keep pace. She knew that Lexa was probably slowing herself down to allow Clarke to keep up, but that was all right. When she pushed to go a little faster, Clarke found herself falling slightly behind... which had its advantages, she discovered. 

Lexa looked back at her after a minute, realizing that she wasn't keeping up, and slowed her pace. "Sorry," she said.

"Don't be," Clarke told her. "I was enjoying the view."

The flush in Lexa's cheeks wasn't just from heat as she realized what Clarke meant, and then Clarke found herself running faster – and in the opposite direction – because Lexa lunged. Of course she caught her within a few steps, and pulled her into an embrace that was only part playful attack. The rest... The rest Clarke took to be a thank you. 

It wasn't so bad, really, she decided. Not something she was likely to get up and do every morning like Lexa and Anya did, but it wasn't completely awful, at least when she was in good company. She might change her mind tomorrow, though, when all of the muscles she'd pushed reminded her of their presence and registered their complaints.

But that was tomorrow. This was today. _One day at a time, Griffin,_ she told herself. _Just take it as it comes._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you believe we're already 1/3 of the way through December? I've been diligently posting every day, either to the [Where There Is A Flame series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/546589) or the [Clexathon series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/598180), depending on whether the story is in this universe or another. 
> 
> I am still accepting prompts! I've got quite a few, but would love more so I have the opportunity to pick and choose a bit. Comment, email (eternaleponine [at] gmail) or send me an ask/IM on Tumblr (ironicsnowflake)! This is for you all, so please, if there's anything you'd love to have me write, let me know!


	104. Lexa

Lexa lifted the stack of books and papers from her lap and set it on the coffee table, arching her back to stretch. She was sick of studying. She was sick of everything related to school, really, and just wanted the semester to be over. Classes were, but finals still loomed, and of course she had one on the first day _and_ the last, and a couple in between, so the whole process stretched out seemingly endlessly in front of her.

And in the middle of it all, her father was coming to visit. Again. As if they needed to see each other more than once every few months. But he was coming because he'd asked her if there was anything that she wanted for her birthday, and her response had been, 'A car.' She was going to need it for the summer, with the internship she'd found (paid, even, although not much) and working at the dojang. She couldn't rely on Anya and Clarke to get her where she needed to be every day; they had their own lives to live, and their own responsibilities. She knew that they would try to accommodate her, try to make things work, but she didn't want to be more of a burden than she had to be. 

So they would get to spend a day (hopefully not more than a day) looking for a car, because _that_ would be so much fun. Even more fun would be telling him that she wasn't actually taking summer classes, because when she'd looked into it, nothing that she needed to make up with switching majors was actually offered in the summer, and she had pretty much covered her gen ed requirements, so there was no point. But he wouldn't understand that. He would think she was just slacking, as if that was something she had ever done. 

She wouldn't tell him the other part of her reasoning, though, because he _definitely_ wouldn't approve. But when she'd thought about, maybe the fact that she was switching majors and would be pretty much a full semester behind as a result, wasn't such a bad thing. Clarke was a year behind her, and after undergrad they both had more school to do, and if she actually graduated on time, everyone would expect her to go straight to law school, but she didn't necessarily want to go to law school in this area, and even if she did, Clarke wouldn't necessarily want to go to med school in this area, and if they graduated at the same time (or if Lexa graduated a semester early and had to wait until the next fall to start law school) they could at least make an effort to find somewhere to go where there was a program for both of them.

'You don't know that the two of you will be together that long,' her father would say. 'You can't make plans around other people. You need to do what's best for you.'

'What's best for me is to be with her,' Lexa wouldn't say, no matter how much she wanted to. Because yes, he was right, she didn't know that they would still be together at graduation. Maybe the odds were even against them for that... but it didn't feel that way. It felt like this was the first time in a long time that things made sense, that her life was going in the right direction, or in any direction at all. She wasn't just treading water. 

But he didn't understand about love. He clearly hadn't bought into the idea that it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Neither had she, for a long time, and she wasn't sure that if she had a choice, she would lose Costia... certainly not in the way that she did. But like Anya had said so many times, their future hadn't been a guarantee any more than her future with Clarke was. They might have ended up breaking up anyway. (If she was being absolutely, brutally honest with herself, the fight that they'd had last summer might have been the last straw, even if Costia had lived to continue the conversation.) And even if they'd stayed together, if she'd met Clarke...

It was too messy to think about. It made her head hurt. So she was grateful when the buzzer rang, and she got up to answer it, pushing the button without even checking because she knew that it was Clarke. No one else ever really came over, and it was too late for any kind of delivery.

"I just wanted to see you before I left," Clarke said by way of greeting when Lexa opened the door. 

Lexa blinked. "Where are you going?"

"Home for the weekend," Clarke said. "I didn't tell you?" Lexa shook her head. "I could have sworn I told you. Maybe it was Octavia or Raven. Maybe I just thought it really loud." She flashed a smile. "I figured since it was Mother's Day this weekend, it might be nice to surprise my mom. Also, I just want to get out of a building full of stressed out people." 

"No finals tomorrow?" Because their school apparently hadn't read the Bill of Rights very closely, or else didn't consider Saturday finals cruel and unusual punishment. 

"No," Clarke said. "I don't actually have any until Tuesday."

"Lucky you," Lexa said. "So you're coming back Monday?"

"Probably. I might come back Sunday, depending on how things go." Clarke looked like she wanted to say more, but whatever it was, she didn't say it. Instead, she said, "I was just stopping by before getting on the road."

_It's late,_ Lexa wanted to say. _Stay here. Go in the morning._ But she didn't say it. She just nodded, then said, "Let me know when you get there."

Clarke pulled her into a hug then, and Lexa held on to her tighter than was maybe necessary, but it was easier to say all the things she wanted to say without saying them than to actually find the words. She felt Clarke's lips on her cheek, and she turned her head to meet them, kissing her softly, her eyes filling with tears and it was stupid to be so emotional when it was only a couple of days... 

"Hey," Clarke said, frowning when she pulled back and saw Lexa's face. "Hey, I'm sorry. I didn't... I didn't think."

"About what?" Lexa asked. 

"Mother's Day."

"Oh." Lexa forced a shaky smile. "It's all right, Clarke. It's... not that. I've lived through more Mother's Days without a mother than with one, and certainly remember more. You're allowed to mention it."

"What, then?" Clarke asked, touching her cheek. 

"Just stress," Lexa said. "I'll be fine."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Go before it gets too late. You still have a little bit of daylight left."

Clarke hugged her again, and kissed her gently, and the look on her face as she left, her hand gripping Lexa's until she was finally too far away to keep hold as she walked out the door... It was enough to break even the coldest heart. "Text me," Lexa repeated. 

"I will," Clarke said. "I'll see you Monday at the latest."

Lexa nodded, and watched her go, and she wasn't sure what the ache in her chest was, honestly, but it wasn't exactly a bad ache... if that was possible.

She went back to the couch and picked up her books again, and tried to force herself to focus.

Clarke's text arrived a couple of hours later, telling her that she'd gotten there safe. Something in Lexa unknotted, tension that she hadn't really realized she was holding. It wasn't like she'd had any reason to believe that anything would happen to Clarke... 

She texted her good morning the next day, like she always did, and Clarke texted good morning back, like she always did, and they didn't really say much for the rest of the day, which left Lexa antsy even though she understood, because Clarke was with her mother and it would be rude to spend the entire time on her phone. 

It was late afternoon when her phone rang, making her jump because she so rarely got calls, even from Clarke. "Hello?"

"So... possible change of plans," Clarke said. "I mean, I guess not really because I have to be home for my final no matter what, but... my mom's in labor. At first she thought it was just Braxton-Hicks, but apparently not. This is the real deal. So that might change the timeline a little, depending on how things go."

"I thought she wasn't due until June," Lexa said.

"She's not. But a month early isn't something that they worry _too_ much about, especially if the baby has otherwise been developing normally, which she has. Twins are considered full-term at 36 weeks. So it's nothing to be too worried about."

Lexa didn't point out that Clarke sounded the exact opposite of not-worried. She wasn't panicked, but she was starting to babble a little, and that wasn't generally an indicator of a calm, collected mental state. "I'm sure that she'll be fine," she said, even though there was no way to be sure of anything. She didn't specify that she actually meant Clarke's mother, not the baby, because she was sure that that was who Clarke was _really_ worried about.

"Anyway... I just wanted to let you know so that if you text me and I don't respond back right away, that's why."

"Okay," Lexa said. "Keep me posted when you can."

"I will."

"I love you," Lexa said.

She heard Clarke exhale like she'd been holding her breath for a while. "I love you too," she said. "I'll talk to you later."

But every time she got an update from Clarke, either via phone or text, she seemed more stressed out, especially when she said that they were headed to the hospital, even though everything was apparently going smoothly and according to plan, and it felt _wrong_ to just sit idly by and do nothing. So she went out into the living room, where Anya was buried under piles of papers that she had to grade so that the professors could make sure that everything was input on time.

"I need a favor," Lexa said.

"I'm listening." She didn't even look up.

"I need to borrow your car."

"You know where the keys are," Anya said. "Go ahead. I'm not going anywhere any time soon."

"It might be for a couple of days." 

_That_ got Anya's attention, and she looked up. "What's going on?"

"Clarke went home to visit her mom for Mother's Day. Her mother went into labor today – a month early – and Clarke is stressed out. She won't admit it, but she is."

"And you want to go take care of her," Anya finished for her. "Don't you have a final on Monday?"

"Yes," Lexa said, "but not until the afternoon, so worst case scenario I come back Monday morning."

Anya rubbed her forehead, and cursed when she accidentally drew a streak of red ink on her skin from the pen she was holding. "It would be better if you can be home by tomorrow night," she said, "but if you can't, I'll deal. Do you need to leave right now?"

"Soon," Lexa said. "Why?"

"Because the timer is about to go off for the lasagna I was making, and if you can wait until it's cool enough to cut, I'll pack some up for both of you."

Lexa opened her mouth, to object maybe, but realized that it was both pointless and ungrateful. This was how Anya showed she cared. It wasn't a gesture for Lexa's benefit alone; she wanted Clarke to know that her thoughts were with her, too. 

"I need to pack a few things anyway," Lexa said. "Make sure I have everything I need to study, since I might be sitting in the waiting room for a while."

"Good girl," Anya said. 

When Lexa finally left, she had her backpack and a duffel bag stuffed with her toiletries, pajamas, and a couple of changes of clothes, and one insulated bag with plastic containers of lasagna and slices of bread ("You'll have to get butter from the cafeteria") and another one with containers of salad, dressing on the side so that it wouldn't get soggy. It was the best Anya could do on short notice, she said. Lexa had told her she was pretty sure that Clarke wouldn't complain.

The drive was long... longer than it had seemed when she'd gone home with Clarke at Easter. She'd been worried then, too, but at least she'd been with Clarke. She just kept reminding herself that she would see her soon, soon, soon...

And finally she pulled into the parking garage and found a spot. There was no reception out here, so she went inside, stopping dead for a moment at the glare of the stark white and the stinging antiseptic smell before forcing herself to move again. She pulled her phone from her pocket and saw that she'd missed a couple of texts from Clarke letting her know that things were okay but going slowly, and that it was hard to study with people constantly in and out of the room checking things.

She tapped on the screen to bring up the keyboard and sent a message in return:

**LEXA:** I'm here.


	105. Clarke

Clarke's phone buzzed in her pocket, and she pulled it out to look.

**LEXA:** I'm here.

She smiled, grateful for the reassurance even though what she _really_ wanted was for Lexa to actually, physically be here, because as much as she said she was fine, and pretended to be fine, she wasn't fine. Mothers didn't like to see their children in pain, and would do anything they could to prevent or alleviate it. Well guess what? Kids didn't like to see their parents in pain, either. But there was no way around it, because her mother was refusing pain meds ('It will just slow down the labor') so she was stuck watching her suffer through each contraction, and there was nothing she could do. Add to that the fact that Marcus was also here (she would have hunted him down and killed him if he wasn't) and it was a recipe for a very uncomfortable situation, and all she really wanted was a hug.

**CLARKE:** Thanks, bae. I know I can always count on you.

Her phone buzzed again a second later.

**LEXA:** No, I mean I'm HERE. At the hospital. Where are you?

Clarke looked around like Lexa would have suddenly appeared at the door, but no, of course not. But she said she was here. How did she even know where _here_ was? Clarke scrolled back quickly to see if she'd mentioned which hospital they were going to, but she hadn't. 

**CLARKE:** Labor  & Delivery. Fourth floor. Room 403. You're not seriously here, are you?

**LEXA:** I don't say things I don't mean, Clarke. 

Clarke could imagine the tone of her voice, even though the words were typed: part amusement, part exasperation. 

**LEXA:** I'll be there soon.

**CLARKE:** Okay. I'll be here.

She got up to go look out the door, toward the elevators. She couldn't quite believe that Lexa would have come all this way... for what? Just to see her? She had to know that Clarke would (eventually) be busy, although she honestly still wasn't 100% clear on what her role was supposed to be. It should be Marcus's job to keep her mom calm and relaxed, right? After all, he was the one who had created this situation in the first place. But her mom had asked her to be here, and she'd agreed, and she couldn't back out on it now. That didn't mean she couldn't take a breather, though, right? Nothing was going to happen in the next few minutes... or hours, probably.

"What are you looking for, honey?" her mom asked. 

"Lexa."

"Lexa?" 

Clarke glanced over her shoulder. "I didn't ask her to come," she said. "She just did." 

Her mother didn't look like she quite knew how to respond to that, but in the end she didn't have to, because the elevator doors opened and Lexa stepped out, looking one down the hallway, then the other. 

"Be right back," Clarke said, and went to meet her.

Lexa broke into a smile as soon as she saw Clarke, and she set down the bags she was carrying, hastily shrugging off her backpack even, to wrap her arms around Clarke and hug her tight. 

"You came," was all Clarke could manage to say. "You came."

"You sounded pretty freaked out," Lexa murmured. "I thought..." She shrugged. "Anya sent her love... in the form of food. Lasagna. It was just out of the oven when I left, but it's been insulated so it's probably a pretty good temperature for eating now. If you're hungry."

"Starved," Clarke realized. "Let me just go tell my Mom."

"Of course," Lexa said. 

Clarke went back to her mother's room, where she was talking to Marcus. "She's here," she said. "She brought food, so I'm going to go eat something. I'll be back in a little while. Just call or text me if anything changes."

"I will," her mother said. She still looked slightly bewildered, but then Clarke was too, so she couldn't exactly blame her.

Lexa had relocated to the waiting room, the containers spread out on a little table, the magazines that had been strewn across it (almost all of them about babies and parenting) had been neatly stacked in one corner. "We need to get butter from the cafeteria," she said. 

"Let me ask the nurses," Clarke said. 

"I don't mind getting it," Lexa said. "You can—"

But Clarke had already gone to the nursing stand, and what do you know, they had a store of those little packs of a single pat of butter, probably from years of people grabbing more than they actually ended up needing when they got their morning bagel or whatever. She thanked them and brought them back to the waiting room. 

Lexa opened the plastic containers, and the smell that arose from them was enough to make Clarke's mouth water and her stomach growl. She'd even remembered to bring utensils, and if there hadn't been a couple of other people in the waiting room giving them funny looks, she would have kissed her then and there. (She was tempted to do it anyway, specifically _because_ they were giving them funny looks.) 

"I can't believe you came," Clarke said. "How did you even know where to find us?"

Lexa shrugged. "I know that your mother is a doctor, and I assumed that she would have her baby at the hospital where she worked, which is Google-able. Obviously if my assumption had been wrong, it would have been a little bit awkward, but luckily it wasn't. Eat."

Clarke ate. Lasagna and salad and bread (which was warm from being in the bag with the lasagna for a few hours), and nothing had ever tasted so good. "Tell Anya thank you from me," she said.

The corner of Lexa's mouth twitched into the faintest hint of a smile. "I will, but you can also text her yourself, you know. She doesn't bite."

"Right," Clarke said. "Sorry. It's been a long day."

"You don't have to be sorry," Lexa said. "That's why I'm here. If it gets to be too much, I'm here."

Clarke pressed her face into Lexa's shoulder to hide the sudden rush of tears. "Thank you."

"What are friends for?" Lexa put her arm around her, rubbing her back slowly, gently up and down, until Clarke actually felt herself relax a little. 

"I should probably go back in there," Clarke said. "Wouldn't want to miss any of the excitement." 

"Is it?" Lexa asked.

"What, exciting? Not even a little bit." Clarke smiled. "It's mostly weird and awkward because it's my Mom, and there are parts of your mom that you're never meant to see." Lexa shuddered, an expression of horror flashing across her face. Clarke laughed. "Don't worry, I haven't," she said. "When my mom asked me to be here, I told her that that was pretty much my one condition. I was there as above-the-waist support only."

"That makes you sound like a bra," Lexa said. 

Clarke laughed. It felt good to laugh. "That's it," she said. "That's my official title: Labor Bra."

"I think I just decided that I don't know you," Lexa said, but her eyes were sparkling with the laughter she wouldn't actually let out. 

"You started it!" Clarke pointed out.

"And I regret it already." 

Clarke helped her pack away the containers, then pulled her up to hug her again, drawing strength from her embrace, and comfort from the kiss that they stole that hopefully no one noticed, or if they did, hopefully they wouldn't give Lexa a hard time about it once she was gone. "I'll keep you posted," she said. 

"I'll be here."

Clarke went back to her mother's room, where things had actually started to progress, although not so far that they'd felt it necessary to call her back. She was grateful, because the half an hour (was that all? It had seemed longer...) she'd spent with Lexa had made her feel a million times more able to face this.

"How is she?" her mother asked. 

"She's fine," Clarke said. "I guess I must have sounded a little panicky when I talked to her, so she decided that she would come and be moral support for the moral support."

"That's sweet of her," Abby said.

"It is," Clarke agreed. "And Anya sent food. Lasagna." She snorted. "Anya lasagna."

"That was nice of her," her mother said. "I'm glad that you have people looking out for you."

"They're good people," Clarke agreed. "I couldn't ask for better friends."

Another contraction hit, and the conversation halted. From there, it was a slow but steady grind, with conversation of any kind becoming more and more difficult as contractions came closer together, and then there were nurses and med students and the doctor in the room, and Clarke wondered if her being here was really necessary at all, but she stayed by the head of her mom's bed, holding her hand sometimes, and murmuring words of encouragement that barely registered as they rolled off her tongue. 

The clock ticked past midnight, and then 1:00 am. Finally, at 1:36 am, Vera Louise Kane-Griffin made her appearance into the world, red and wrinkled and squalling and _tiny_ , but not so tiny that the doctors were worried, greeted by subdued cheers of, "Happy Birthday!" and "Happy Mother's Day!" 

Marcus cut the cord and the baby was laid on her mother's chest, and everyone cooed over how beautiful she was, but really she looked like any other baby to Clarke, and she didn't know where she fit in this picture, and it made her squirm because she could sense some of the others in the room weren't sure either.

"Congratulations," she said, leaning in to kiss her mother's forehead. 

Abby looked at her, reached out and touched her cheek. "Thank you, sweetheart," she said. "Thank you for being here." 

"Of course," Clarke said, her eyes flooding, and wasn't her mom the one who was supposed to be all hormonal and emotionally labile? 

"Why don't you go tell Lexa?" her mother suggested. "Get some air."

"Thank you," Clarke choked, and hurried from the room as fast as she could without making it look like she was fleeing.

Lexa had set aside her books and stood up before Clarke got to her, and she crashed into her arms, and now where was no one else around to care (except the nurses, and they were professionally obligated to not care regardless of their personal feelings, as long as they exercised a reasonable amount of decorum) so she let herself cling, just breathing slowly, surrounded by the scent of Lexa's soap and shampoo, the bright citrus an antidote to an overdose of antiseptic. 

Lexa's lips brushed her ear, and she nuzzled against her jaw. "Is it over, then?"

Clarke nodded. "Five pounds, nine ounces. Looks like an alien or Winston Churchill. I haven't decided which." She lifted her head to look at Lexa. "Did I say thank you for coming? Because thank you for coming."

"You did," Lexa said, her fingers closing around the back of Clarke's neck and squeezing gently. "Several times."

"Just wanted to make sure." Clarke leaned against her for a minute longer, and then reluctantly let go. "I should go back in there, just to make sure she's okay."

"Okay," she said, and then softer, "I'm not going anywhere."

Clarke just looked at her for a moment, studying her face, that unflappable calm and the love and concern in her eyes, and exhaustion rolled over her like a wave, and all she wanted was to curl up with her and sleep, safe and warm and loved. 

"You look as tired as I feel," her mother said. "You can head home if you want to. Get some sleep."

"Thanks." She went over to the bed and hugged her mother, now that she could. Marcus was holding the baby, wrapped up in one of those white blankets with the blue and pink edges that were pretty much standard at every hospital everywhere, it seemed like. "I'll come back in the morning, if you want."

"I would like to see you before you go," Abby said. "But go rest. You've earned it."

"You too," Clarke said, and hugged her again. "I love you."

"I love you too," Abby said. "Sweet dreams."

Clarke grabbed her bag from where it had been tucked in the corner, out of everyone's way, and went back out to the waiting room. "Let's go," she said.

When they got to the parking garage they realized that if they were going to get both of their cars back to Clarke's house, they would have to separate, which neither of them particularly wanted to do. In the end, they decided to leave Clarke's car for the night and get it the next day, and Lexa drove them home with Clarke acting as navigator... which was a good thing because they weren't actually going back to the house that Lexa had been to before, because the majority of the furniture had been moved the previous weekend.

Clarke used the last of her energy to brush her teeth and change into pajamas before collapsing into bed, burrowing against Lexa like she was the only shelter in the face of an oncoming storm. It was only then that she realized how tense Lexa was, and she forced her eyes open again to look at her. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing that can't wait," Lexa said. "Just sleep. We'll worry about everything else in the morning."

Clarke wanted to argue, wanted to make Lexa tell her whatever was bothering her now, but the truth was she was too tired, and if Lexa said it could wait... She tipped her face up, and Lexa kissed her softly, and this time when her eyes closed, all the willpower in the world couldn't keep her awake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope everyone has been enjoying the daily posts. We're more than halfway through the month, but yes, I am still accepting prompts! Comment, email, Tumblr... throw them at me! You never know what might stick.


	106. Lexa

Lexa woke up with her eyes raw and gritty, aching even in the faint light that crept in around the blinds. She couldn't see what time it was, because Clarke was pressed against her back, one arm draped over her waist, and she didn't want to wake her up by rolling over to look at the clock. It took a minute for her to realize that her phone was on the nightstand right in front of her, and she carefully reached out and grabbed it, realizing that she'd switched it to silent when she went to the hospital and never turned the sound back on. 

Probably better, or the texts from Anya at 6:30 am might have woken her up. Or maybe the jittering of the phone against the wood _had_ woken her up, and she just hadn't realized it, because it was only 6:43 now.

**ANYA:** Any news?

Lexa glanced back at Clarke, but all she saw was hair because her face was mostly pressed into the back of Lexa's shoulder. She typed as carefully as she could, trying not to move too much.

**LEXA:** Yes. Sorry. She was born at 1:30-something last night. This morning. Whatever.

**ANYA:** Ten fingers, ten toes, all of that?

**LEXA:** I assume. I didn't see her.

**ANYA:** Sorry if I woke you.

**LEXA:** I slept like shit anyway.

**ANYA:** Want to talk about it?

**LEXA:** I don't even know where to begin.

Being at the hospital had stirred up a lot of stuff, stuff she thought she'd moved past, but it turned out that mostly she'd just buried it, and memories were like zombies... go to the graveyard and you'll realize that the dead are rising.

Or something. 

She hadn't gotten to see her mother much in the last few days of her life. Her mother had resisted going to the hospital for a long time, longer maybe than she should have, and when she finally went, they'd had to put her on some pretty aggressive drugs that had compromised her immune system. Which meant that little girls who spent seven hours a day in the human petri dish that was elementary school weren't allowed. 

She hadn't realized then that when her father finally took her to see her mother, when she'd been allowed to climb into the bed with her and stay as long as she wanted, that it was because her mother was dying, and the doctors knew it, and her father knew it, and they were giving them both a chance to say goodbye.

Except she hadn't actually _said_ goodbye. Not really. Because no one had explained to her that this would be the last time she would see her mother. Maybe they thought they were sparing her, or maybe they thought there would be a little more time...

She didn't like hospitals.

And then there was the whole baby thing. Being in the waiting room of Labor & Delivery, you saw a lot of people who were really excited about babies. One woman had asked who she was waiting for, and had given her the dirtiest look when she'd said, "My girlfriend," and didn't even apologize for it when she heard, "'s mother." 

She didn't know if it was the gay thing or the not being there for the person bearing your child thing that had irked the woman more, and she hadn't tried to find out. 

But there were flowers and balloons and stuffed animals everywhere as people passed by on the way to the maternity ward, and everyone was smiling and laughing and Lexa didn't get it. On a fundamental level, she just didn't get it, and maybe something was wrong with her, because shouldn't she feel _something_?

Except that wasn't true. She did feel something. It just wasn't what women were supposed to feel when they thought about babies. 

**LEXA:** I don't know my anniversary.

The message made sense to her, but she could imagine Anya's face upon receiving it, an expression somewhere between 'WTF?' and 'Okaaaayyyy...'

**ANYA:** With Clarke? Does it matter?

**LEXA:** Costia was the one who kept track of those things.

**ANYA:** Does it matter?

Lexa sighed. Did it? It felt like it did, all of a sudden. 

**LEXA:** How soon is too soon to start talking about the future with someone?

**ANYA:** You're asking the wrong person.

A second message came through before Lexa could respond.

**ANYA:** I don't think there's a too soon, depending on the intensity of the topic.

**LEXA:** On a scale of 1 to 10, this one goes to 11.

**ANYA:** Make sure she's had coffee first?

Lexa laughed. She couldn't help it. She immediately tried to muffle it, hoping that the sudden sound and movement hadn't disturbed Clarke... but she could feel her shift, and then the press of her lips to the back of her shoulder, so yeah, it probably had.

**LEXA:** Thanks. GTG.

**ANYA:** She loves you. Don't forget that.

"You were crying in your sleep," Clarke said softly. 

That explained her sore, swollen eyes. She rolled over to face Clarke, who loosened her arms enough to let her do so before tightening them again, pulling her close. "Good morning, Clarke," she said just as softly. "I'm sorry if I woke you."

"It's okay," Clarke said. "Talk to me."

Lexa wanted to shake her head. Wanted to say no. Wanted to tell her that there was nothing to talk about, that she was okay, she was fine, really. But every word would have been a lie, and she couldn't force them out.

"When is our anniversary?" she said instead.

Clarke blinked, confused and yeah, probably suspicious, realizing that Lexa was asking the question to avoid having to talk about what was really bothering her. But she wasn't, really. Not exactly. It was all connected in her head. 

"I don't know," Clarke said. "Why?"

"I just... can't figure out how long we've been together," Lexa said. "I don't even know where to start counting from. Our first kiss? And do we count from the first kiss where you ran away or the first one where both of us actually knew it was happening? Not that there's much difference, date-wise. But if we count from there, it's only... it's not even two months. And that feels wrong."

Clarke stroked her fingers down Lexa's back. "Nothing about this feels wrong," she said. "This – you – feel more right than anything."

Lexa's eyes flooded with tears, and for a moment she couldn't say anything. When she did, her voice was raspy, choked, thick with emotion. "Yes, exactly. It feels like... it was you. It was always you. It will al—" She stopped herself before she could step off the ledge and plunge into the deep end.

"It will what?" Clarke asked, and now her hand had slid back up, under Lexa's shirt this time, her hand warm against Lexa's back. 

"It will always be you," Lexa said, almost too softly to hear. 

Clarke kissed her, and for a second, a few seconds, a minute or a moment or longer... that was all that mattered. That was all there was, and she could believe in forever as she once had.

If only she could stop her mouth. Her stupid, betraying mouth.

"Costia," she said, the name out of place when her entire body was pressed tight against Clarke's, but she couldn't keep it in, and maybe this was her way of ruining things before they could ruin her, or maybe she was just too much of a wreck and had had too little sleep and her filters were out of whack (or completely non-existent) and Clarke loved her. Anya had said so. _Clarke_ had said so. She had to believe that that meant something.

"What about her?" Clarke asked, and her patience was admirable given the fact that she hadn't had any more sleep than Lexa had. 

"She believed in soulmates. Maybe not the whole 'there is only one person in the entire world that you will ever be happy with' idea of soulmates, but the idea that there could be two people who were meant to be together."

Clarke stiffened, and Lexa could feel her pulling away, if not physically than mentally. Emotionally. Creating distance to insulate herself against pain that she knew was coming, and Lexa's heart broke, but she didn't want to hurt her, wasn't going to hurt her... "Do you?"

"I didn't," Lexa said. "But then you walked into my room – uninvited – and it was like something inside of me woke up, opened its eyes, and said, 'Oh. It's you.' And even if I wanted to, I couldn't put that part of me back to sleep." She leaned in, resting her forehead against Clarke's, letting her eyes close. "For the first time since Costia's death, I let someone in. I let _you_ in. I could say that I didn't have a choice, but I did. I could have tried to push you away; I did it with everyone else. But I didn't want to. Because like you said, it felt right. From the very beginning, it felt right."

She opened her eyes again, pulling back enough that she could focus on Clarke's face. "When I was with you – when I _am_ with you – I see a future. Possibility. Hope. I can imagine waking up with you every morning for the rest of my life, and it terrifies me because I want it so badly, and... and I just wonder if at some point we're going to realize that this won't work, that it can't work, and... and..." 

Tears slid down her cheeks, and this was all too much. It was too early and too intense and she was talking about forever and Clarke was saying _nothing_ and...

"Probably not every morning," Clarke said, smiling at her as she tenderly dried her face with the corner of the sheet. "It depends what area of medicine I go into, but there's a good chance that I'll end up working in a hospital, which will mean some overnight shifts, so probably not _every_ morning. But most of them. As many as we can. No, don't cry! Lexa!" 

Because of course she was crying even harder than before. She had expected Clarke to be freaked out by all of this, not to just agree with her... or contradict her in a way that was still agreeing on the most important part of what she'd said. 

"Lexa," Clarke murmured, over and over again as she held her, rubbing her back and stroking her hair. "Lexa, shh, shh, it's all right." 

It wasn't fair to Clarke that she had to comfort her... but that was what you did when the person you loved was hurting. She'd driven several hours to come be with Clarke, after all. Not that it mattered. It wasn't about keeping score. 

She finally managed to calm down enough that the tears stopped and her breathing went mostly back to normal. She looked up to apologize, but Clarke shook her head, just slightly, like she knew what was coming and was telling her no, don't, you don't have to.

"Will you tell me what brought all of this on?" she asked quietly. "What it is that you think will make this not work, at some indeterminate point in the future?"

"Just... what if there's something that you want that I don't, or vice versa, and it's a dealbreaker? Something neither of us is willing to compromise on?"

"Lexa," Clarke said, because she was still evading the question and they both knew it.

So Lexa took a deep breath and just said it. "Babies. Kids. I don't want them. I never have."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hard to believe the year is nearly over! There's only a few days left of Clexathon, but if you have any last minute prompts you want to get in, send them my way!


	107. Clarke

_Ah,_ Clarke thought. _Suddenly it all makes sense._

She worked her fingers into Lexa's hair, massaging her scalp gently, trying to get her to relax, because it wasn't the end of the world. It wasn't the end of anything. 

Under different circumstances, they might not have had this conversation for months. _Years_ , even. Hell, there was a chance that it might _never_ have come up, although that seemed relatively slim, given the fact that someone they knew at some point would have a baby, and then it would be almost inevitable that they would be asked if they ever planned to. But the confluence of Mother's Day and the arrival of her little sister and Lexa being left on her own in a hospital waiting room with too much time to think had forced Lexa's hand.

The thing was, Clarke wasn't surprised. Back when they'd visited for Easter, the baby had been kicking, and her mom had let Clarke feel it. It had been kind of weird actually seeing and feeling the evidence that there was a tiny human growing inside of her mother, but kind of awesome at the same time, and she was going to deal with a lot weirder in medicine. Then her mother had looked at Lexa and asked, 'Did you want to feel too?', and Lexa had politely declined, but not before Clarke had seen the flicker of panic in her eyes, like the very idea made her want to crawl out of her own skin.

Maybe it did. The idea of having what was essentially a parasite feeding off of you, wreaking havoc on every bodily function, for the better part of ten months, was pretty horrific when you thought about it. It was also necessary to the continuation of the human race, and something that a lot of women – maybe most women – wanted to experience at some point in their life.

Not Lexa. Obviously.

"Okay," Clarke said.

Lexa blinked. "Okay?" Her forehead furrowed. "That's it? Just, 'Okay'?"

"Should it not be?" Clarke asked. 

"Most people—" Lexa started, but Clarke shook her head.

"We're not talking about most people," she said. "This is just you and me, and what _we_ want."

The truth was, when she'd thought about the future, she'd imagined that she would probably end up having a kid at some point, after medical school and internships and residencies, when she was settled into her career. But how much of that was what she really wanted and would find personally fulfilling, and how much of it was just absorbed societal expectations of what the life of a successful woman would look like? How much of it was the fact that she'd grown up in a happy, stable home, so she just assumed that her future would take the same shape? She'd also always assumed that she would end up in a relationship with a man. 

Things changed. 

"What do _you_ want?" Lexa asked. 

"I want to be happy," Clarke said. "I want to have a life that's full of friends and family. I want a life where I do work that matters, but I don't want work to be all that I have. I want lazy weekend mornings and arguing over whose turn it is to unload the dishwasher and barbecues on the Fourth of July and folding laundry together and vacations to Disney World and..."

Lexa was tearing up again. "Hawaii?"

"Hawaii," Clarke agreed, kissing her nose. "And wiping away your tears because your emotions are way too big for the cage you try to keep them in, and you calling my mom to get her chicken soup recipe because it's the only thing that I'll eat when I have a cold, and—"

"But that doesn't answer the question," Lexa said.

"Doesn't it?" Clarke asked. "You asked me what I wanted."

"I know," Lexa said. "But we're talking about—"

Clarke worked her fingers out of Lexa's hair and touched her cheek, one finger resting lightly against her lips for a second, stopping her. "I know what we're talking about."

"You said family..."

"Family means a lot of things," Clarke said. "Not all of them involve children. There are the families that we're born into, and there are the families that we choose. Anya. Octavia. Raven. Lincoln. They're our family, too. Right?"

Lexa nodded. 

"Okay." She let her fingers trail down Lexa's arm and took her hand, bringing it to her lips and kissing her knuckles. "Now that we've gotten that sorted out... coffee? Because that was a whole lot of heavy adult conversation to have with so little sleep and no caffeine."

"Oh shit," Lexa said. "I was supposed to make sure you had coffee first."

"Says who?"

"Anya."

Clarke laughed. "It's not too late. There's even tea, if you'd rather. I checked."

"Okay." Lexa pushed herself up to sitting, and Clarke did the same. She reached out to trace her thumb along Lexa's jaw, leaning in to kiss her softly before getting up.

She didn't know where anything was in this place yet, so making coffee involved a lot of trial and error. Luckily, food was pretty much kept in the same place in any kitchen, so Lexa didn't have too hard a time finding bread and eggs and milk. Cinnamon and a skillet were a little bit trickier, and it was only then that Clarke figured out she was making French toast. 

"You don't—" she started, then stopped herself. "That looks delicious," she said instead, even though right now it was just pieces of bread dripping raw egg that Lexa was placing carefully in the pan.

"I'm not _completely_ useless in the kitchen," Lexa said. "See if you can find the plates."

They worked side by side in silence, and Clarke couldn't help looking over at her every few seconds, just marveling at how easy this was, how much the present resembled the future that she'd always imagined... 

Lexa set plates of golden brown bread on the table, along with the little jug of syrup, and Clarke went to retrieve her coffee and Lexa's tea. "Honey?" she asked.

"Yes, dear?" Lexa responded, and Clarke was tempted for a minute to throw the little plastic bear at her head, but no, she couldn't, not when Lexa was smiling at her like that. 

"Are you _sure_ you don't want kids?" she teased. "Because you've got the Dad jokes down already."

Lexa wrinkled her nose. "Why is everyone always convinced that women who say they don't want kids haven't thought it through? Why are they always so sure that they're going to change their mind?"

"I was joking," Clarke said gently. 

"I know," Lexa said, spearing a piece of toast that she'd carefully cut and dragging it through a puddle of syrup. "But most people aren't, and it's... frustrating. And kind of insulting. And probably the worst thing about it is that if, for some reason, somewhere down the line, you _do_ change your mind, all you're going to hear from everyone forever is, 'I told you so.'"

This time it was Clarke that frowned. "Which sucks," she said. "It's possible for people to change their mind about things, and that doesn't mean that what they thought or felt before is invalid, that they were wrong at the time."

"Or that it was just a phase, and now you've grown out of it," Lexa said. "Like conforming to societal norms is some kind of merit badge to be earned to prove that you're a capital-A adult or something." 

Clarke took a bite and chewed it slowly, thinking that over. It was still way too early for this heavy a conversation, but she wasn't going to just try to dismiss it. "Can I ask you something?"

"Of course," Lexa said. "I just don't promise that I'll answer."

Clarke nodded. "Fair enough." She took a sip of her coffee, leaving her hand wrapped around the mug as she tried to figure out the best way to phrase it so that she didn't somehow imply that she thought that Lexa was going to change her mind. "Do you not want to be a _parent_ , or is it just the whole pregnancy, giving birth, all of that that you want no part of?"

Lexa looked at her, her head cocked. "No one has ever actually asked me that," she said, and it looked as though she was almost smiling as she seemed to mull it over. "You've already figured out where I stand on pregnancy. I've never seen the appeal of babies. At all. I guess maybe they can be cute? Occasionally? In very small doses? But they're small, and helpless, and they can't tell you what they want, and gross things come out of every orifice on a regular basis." She shrugged. 

"So even if someone else was having the baby..." 

Lexa looked at her, then away. "That's the thing, though. You and I can't have a baby together. Unless there are some medical advances that you know about that I don't, it's not biologically possible. And I know that family is more than blood. I know that all of that shouldn't matter. But it does. It would. To me. If you had a baby, it would be half you... and half someone else. A stranger, or..." She shook her head. "I don't think I would be able to not see that. Not feel it. There would always be a disconnect on some level in my head."

"Okay," Clarke said. And it was. Lexa was right that blood wasn't all that mattered when it came to family, but when she put it that way... she didn't think she would want to go through all of the many and sundry pains of pregnancy to bring a child into the world that wasn't wholly and entirely _theirs_. There was always the possibility of adoption, but that didn't change the fundamental fact that Lexa wasn't comfortable with babies, and didn't want them. "So no babies."

"No babies," Lexa said. "And then when they get old enough to stop being completely helpless, then they just become pains in the ass."

Clarke laughed. She was pretty sure she was supposed to, that it was meant to lighten the mood. "I can't imagine that you were ever a bad kid," she said. "You were probably a perfect child."

"I'm sure I wasn't," Lexa said. "Maybe on the surface, but I had a lot of anger. _A lot_ of anger. If my father hadn't found a way for me to channel it, things might have ended up very, very differently."

Clarke could see that. Octavia had told her about how Lexa had completely lost it on the guy who'd attacked her at New Year's, and she'd seen the barely suppressed rage when they'd seen Finn waiting at her car at the movie theater. She got up and put her arms around Lexa, resting her cheek against hers. "I'm glad you ended up who you are," she murmured. "I'm glad you found me."

"I'm glad that you were there to be found," Lexa whispered back. 

Clarke tightened her arms around her, and Lexa's hands came up to rest over them. Clarke closed her eyes and tried instead to memorize everything else: the warmth of Lexa's skin and the touch of the sun through the window, the thumping of her own heart and the steady in and out of Lexa's breathing, the taste of coffee that lingered on her tongue, the scent of cinnamon and syrup. She stored it all away, for darker days when she needed a happy thought to keep her going. 

_Did you mean it?_ , she thought, but she didn't say it out loud. She didn't need to. She knew the answer. 

"I think some part of me knew you too," she said softly. "I didn't realize it at first, but then I woke up that night and you were there, and you told me, 'It's okay. You're safe.' And I was. It took my head a long time to catch up, but I'm pretty sure it was then, in that moment, that my heart found its home."

She heard Lexa's breath catch, and she made a sound somewhere between a hiccup and a laugh. "Are you _trying_ to make me cry again?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Sunday for those celebrating neither! 
> 
> I can't believe the month/year is almost over. Only a few more days of the Clexathon to go, so if you have any last minute prompts, please let me know! (If I don't get to them this month, they could still happen another time.) Email, Tumblr, comment... you know the drill.


	108. Lexa

After breakfast, a shower, and a change of clothes, Lexa felt somewhat more human. Her eyes were still red-rimmed and puffy from crying, and she still felt vulnerable, exposed, raw... but Clarke was still with her. She hadn't scared her away, made her change her mind about this. She'd listened - _really_ listened – and understood... and even agreed, or at least had accepted and was okay with...

... Unless she was lying. Unless she really wasn't okay with it, deep down, and she'd just said she was to appease Lexa. But that wasn't Clarke. Clarke didn't just give in to something to make someone else happy if it really mattered to her. 

Right?

Sometimes she felt like they knew each other so well, that instant recognition and understanding that she'd mentioned before, that – god, it was so cheesy, so cliché, but there it was, and she hadn't felt it when Costia had talked about it, and so she hadn't believed in it then – that connection of their souls like they'd known each other before somehow...

"Stop," Clarke said. 

Lexa looked up. She hadn't even heard Clarke open the door. She stood in front of her, wrapped in a bathrobe, drying her hair with a towel. "I wasn't—"

"You're overthinking it. Whatever it is." Clarke smiled. "As a lifetime, chronic, possibly terminal over-thinker, I recognize the symptoms." 

Lexa tried to hide her flinch at the word 'terminal'. _Get a grip,_ she told herself. _It's just a word, and she's joking. Or... not joking, but trying to make light. She's fine. Nothing's wrong with her. Calm down._

"You're doing it again," Clarke said. She sat down next to Lexa. "Narrowed eyes, furrowed brow, downturned mouth..." She traced Lexa's features as she pointed them out. "It's clear as day." She cupped Lexa's cheek with one hand, and Lexa pressed into the touch, closing her eyes as she tried to get herself in check.

"Talk to me," Clarke said softly. "Whatever it is, just talk to me." Lexa felt Clarke's forehead against her own. "Not just now. Always. There is nothing you can't say to me, and although I can't and won't promise that I won't get upset, I _do_ promise that I will always listen, and do my best to understand, and whatever it is... we'll work through it."

Lexa sighed, and it came out a shudder. "I'm tired of talking," she said. "I feel like I've already said too much. We've been awake for an hour, and I've already put you through the wringer."

"So what?" Clarke asked. "You were upset, and we worked through it. Or we're working through it, because obviously you're still upset."

"I just... have trust issues," Lexa said finally. "I want to believe that you're as okay with all of this as you say you are."

"Then believe me," Clarke said. "Have I ever lied to you?"

"Not that I know of," Lexa said.

Even though her eyes were still closed so there was no way for her to be absolutely certain, she was pretty sure that Clarke rolled her eyes. "I haven't. And I won't. You don't say things that you don't mean, and I've done the same with you. If I say that I'm okay with something, then I am."

"What if you change your mind?" Lexa asked.

"It doesn't make what I said in the past untrue," Clarke said. "It just means that I changed my mind. Here and now, I can only tell you what is true here and now. I can only tell you what I believe and what I feel in this moment. A week or a year or a decade from now, that truth might be different."

"What happens then?" Lexa asked. "What if somewhere down the line, you change your mind, and I don't?"

"Then we have this conversation again," Clarke said. "I know that basically all of the media that we're fed – comedies, dramas, all of it – seems to rely on the idea that people don't talk to each other. But I've had enough drama this past semester to last me a lifetime. So if we need to figure things out, we talk to each other. We work through it. We talk about why you feel the way you feel at that point, and why I feel the way I feel, and we see if we can work out a compromise."

"And if we can't?"

"Let's not go borrowing trouble," Clarke said. "I have faith in us, that no matter what happens, we'll figure out a way to work through it." Lexa opened her eyes, and Clarke was right there, so close, her expression soft. "I don't know if love conquers _all_ , but I think it's a pretty good starting place for a lot of things."

Lexa nodded, and leaned in to kiss Clarke, felt her arms slide around her, and in silence she drank from Clarke's lips the reassurance that she couldn't quite accept in words.

When Clarke was dressed (and Lexa was dressed again) Lexa looked at her and swallowed hard. Being this much of an emotional mess was exhausting, and all she really wanted to do was crawl back under the covers with her (again) and hide from the world for a little while longer. Instead she said, "I should probably take you back to the hospital."

Clarke looked at her, and for a second they just studied each other's faces like they were trying to read everything that was behind the words and their carefully constructed expressions. "You don't have to," she said. "Not yet."

"Won't your mom...?" Lexa started, not sure how to finish.

"My mom will be fine. If she really needed me, she could call me. She's got Marcus there with her. That's..." Clarke frowned. "Actually, there's something..." She stopped again. "How good are you with tools?"

Lexa raised a questioning eyebrow. "Is this some sort of Lesbian Street Cred test?" she asked, meaning it as a joke. It came off sort of awkward and flat, but Clarke laughed anyway.

"No. Marcus was saying yesterday that because they'd only just moved, he hadn't actually had a chance to build the crib yet. I know that the baby might sleep in a bassinet or whatever for the first few days, or weeks, but I thought it might be nice for them to come home to have it already built. But I don't have a huge amount of experience with building stuff, and I don't think they would be nearly as impressed if I turned the crib into a deathtrap."

Lexa smiled. "What level of construction experience is needed here?" she asked. "Are we talking master carpenter, or are we talking IKEA?"

"I'm pretty sure it's more toward the IKEA end of the spectrum," Clarke said. "It's all in a flat pack box."

"It comes with all of the screws and everything?"

"I think so."

"Let's see." Lexa got up and followed Clarke into the nursery, which was basically just a blank room with some boxes in the middle at this point. They pried open the big flat box with all of the pieces of the crib, and yes, it came with all of the pieces needed to hold it together. Lexa looked at the instructions. "I can do this," she said. "I just need a screwdriver. Philips head."

"That's the X one?" Clarke asked.

"Yes."

"On it." 

It took her a little while, but then she probably didn't know where everything was in this house yet, and Lexa couldn't really blame her for the look of annoyance on her face when she finally returned. "Thank you," Lexa said when Clarke put the screwdriver in her hand, pulling her in and kissing her gently. "I started to get things laid out in the order we'll need them, but if you want to keep sorting..."

Clarke picked up the directions, then flipped them over, then back again. "You actually understand this?" she asked.

"Didn't I tell you that I speak Swedish?" Lexa asked. 

"No," Clarke said, then looked at her, her eyes narrowing. "Do you really?"

"Sure," Lexa said. She pointed to one of the illustrations. "It says, 'Und dern you terk der hoolder-ooper und goo roondy roondy roondy und—"

"That is _not_ Swedish," Clarke said. 

"It is too!" Lexa said. "I learned it from a chef when I was a kid!" Clarke's eyes narrowed further. "I swear. I'll show you." Lexa pulled out her phone and pulled up a video of the Swedish Chef, handing it over to Clarke. 

"That's a Muppet!" Clarke said. She watched the video, then handed Lexa her phone back, laughing. "You're ridiculous."

"Maybe," Lexa said. "But it made you smile."

"Let's just get this done," Clarke said, not really mad. "Without any more language lessons."

"You're no fun," Lexa teased, but they got to work. 

It was a little harder to put together than those bookshelves that you could buy at Target, but the concept was the same, and once they had it together and were confident that it was safe, they went ahead and unpacked the boxes, too, because wouldn't it be nice for the new parents to come home to a finished (or as finished as they could make it) nursery?

"I'm shocked that it's not all pink," Lexa said as she put the giraffe and elephant printed sheets on the crib mattress. 

"My mom specifically didn't tell people whether she was having a boy or a girl so that it wouldn't be," Clarke said. "She knows that it's basically impossible to avoid social indoctrination into the gender binary, but she can at least hold it off as long as possible by not having the baby learn from the moment she can actually focus her eyes that pink is the only acceptable color."

"Did you get her anything?" Lexa asked. 

"Umm... I was totally going to?" Clarke said with a sheepish smile. "I thought I had until the beginning of June!"

"Do you want to go get something now?" Lexa asked. "I don't mind driving."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure," Lexa said. Not that she felt that Clarke necessarily owed anything to her mother, but it would be a gesture of goodwill, especially since it was Mother's Day. Which she hoped that Clarke had at least gotten something for her mother for that, but she wasn't going to bring it up because it wasn't really something that she wanted to talk about. Most of the time she was able to just sort of ignore the day, and get through it that way, and there was no reason that she couldn't employ that strategy today as well.

They put on their shoes and headed out to the mall, where Lexa tried not to regret her decision about volunteering to do this. It was still early enough that it wasn't packed, but she still wasn't (and probably never would be) a big fan of masses of humanity moving in herds through enclosed spaces. 

While Clarke looked around the baby store, Lexa went to the Disney Store a few shops down, and came back clutching a bag triumphantly. Clarke looked at her, holding up two sets of outfits – one with monsters and one with robots. "Which do you think I should get?" she asked.

"Both," Lexa said. 

Clarke looked at one, then the other, and shrugged. "Okay," she said, but switched one of them for the next size up. "Babies grow fast," she explained. "Most of the time there's pretty much no point in buying newborn size at all, because they outgrow it so fast. Vera was born small enough that she might be in them a little longer, but I'm still getting 3-6 months and 6-9 months." She looked down at Lexa's bag. "What'd you get?"

Lexa opened the bag and pulled out a little plush Swedish Chef and grinned.

Clarke laughed loud enough that people turned to look at them, and Lexa just waved. "I know that she won't understand it... and neither will your mom and Marcus, but _we'll_ know why it's funny."

"Have I mentioned you're ridiculous?"

"You might have," Lexa said. "But it made you laugh."

Clarke looked at her, and she didn't need to say anything for Lexa to understand everything she wanted to say: _I love you_ and _Thank you_ and _What would I do without you?_ and _Let's hope we never have to find out._

They went to the register, where Clarke paid a couple of dollars extra to have them gift wrap things, even though Lexa was sure that her mother wouldn't care if she just gave them to her wrapped in the bag, or nothing at all. "Should I...?"

"You don't have to," Clarke said. "She'll love that you got anything at all."

Lexa nodded. They left the mall and went back to the car, and then to the hospital, where Abby and Marcus looked exhausted and elated, and Vera was thankfully quiet in her little glass bassinet next to the bed. Lexa hesitated at the door, watching as Clarke went in to hug her mother and hand over the gift.

"You didn't have to," Abby said.

"I know. Open it," Clarke prompted, and grinned when her mother chuckled at her selections.

"I should say that I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that you've already decided that your sister is a little monster," Abby said, "but I love it. Thank you, sweetheart."

"Lexa—" It was only then that Clarke looked at her and saw she hadn't made it past the door. She held out her hand, and Lexa forced herself to cross the threshold, letting Clarke take her hand and squeeze it. "She got something, too."

Lexa handed her the bag, embarrassed now that she hadn't gotten it wrapped. Abby thanked her automatically, and then gave her a questioning look when she pulled the little stuffed chef with the giant mustache and no eyes from the bag. "My mom and I used to watch the Muppets together," she said. "And I told Clarke that I'd learned Swedish from a chef when I was a kid." She swallowed. "It's..."

"It's wonderful," Abby said. "Thank you."

"You're welcome," Lexa said. 

Abby looked at her, then at Clarke and Marcus. "Can you give us a minute?"

Clarke looked at Lexa, who forced a smile. "It's okay." She wasn't sure that it was. She wasn't sure what Abby could possibly want to say to her that she couldn't say in front of Clarke, but whatever it was, she would handle it.

"I'll be right outside," Clarke said, and she and Marcus left.

Abby looked at the little plush doll, then at Lexa. "I just wanted to say thank you," she said, "for looking out for my baby girl." She must have caught Lexa glancing somewhat confusedly over at the baby, because she clarified, "My first baby girl. Having you show up last night... that meant the world to her. And to me. It's hard for a parent to let go of a child, even a little bit, but at least I know that when she's not with me, she's got someone who loves her just as much."

Lexa swallowed hard. "Yes ma'am," she whispered. 

"And I know that nothing will ever replace your mother, and I would never try to, but Lexa, if there is ever _anything_ you need that I can help with, please don't hesitate to ask."

This time she couldn't force out any words at all. She just nodded, swallowing over and over again until she finally managed to choke out, "Thank you."

"Of course," Abby said, then smiled. "You can go back to Clarke now."

Lexa nodded again, turning to go, then stopped. "Actually, there _is_ something I need from you. Not right this second, but when you're unpacked and get a chance."

"What's that?" Abby asked.

"Your chicken soup recipe."

Abby's face split in a grin. "As soon as I find it, I'll email it to you," she promised.


	109. Clarke

"What was that about?" Clarke asked as soon as Lexa stepped out of her mother's room and Marcus went back in. "What did she say?"

"I think..." The expression on Lexa's face was slightly bemused, but she didn't seem upset, so probably her mother hadn't said anything horrible. Not that she would. Probably. She seemed to like Lexa well enough, and Clarke was pretty sure that if she didn't, she would have said something at some point about it. "I think she just offered to be my... emergency mom? Kinda?"

Clarke almost laughed with relief. "Oh. Yeah. She does that. Did she give you her number?"

"Why would she give me her number?"

"In case you need to call her. She's had a long day... day and a half, I guess, now. She probably forgot. Give me your phone."

Lexa had already pulled it from her pocket and handed it over before she asked, "Why?"

"So I can put her number in it," Clarke said, glancing up at her. "In case you need to call her."

"Why would I...?" Lexa didn't even finish the question. She was just staring at Clarke like she'd lost her mind.

"In case you need an emergency mom," Clarke said. "When she offers to be there for you if you ever need anything, she means it. If it's in her power to help you in any way, she'll do it." She handed Lexa back her phone.

Lexa looked at the screen, and her lips pursed the way they did when she was fighting back a smile. "You actually put her in here as Emergency Mom."

"You can change it _if you must_ ," Clarke replied, heaving a long-suffering sigh, and had to do an awkward shuffle-step to dodge the hip-check that Lexa threw at her. "Seriously, though. I know that Mom and I have had our differences, and that we're still trying to patch things up after several _years_ of being at odds... but I know that no matter what, if I need her, she's there. She'll drop everything for me. And that has a tendency to extend to the people who I care about. Octavia has her number, too, and I have absolutely no doubt that when she meets Raven, she'll get pulled into my mom's collection of waifs and strays."

"I would never—" Lexa started, but Clarke lifted a finger, pressed is softly against her lips, just for a second.

"Never say never," Clarke said. "You can't know for sure that you won't need it at some point." 

"Okay," Lexa said, still not sounding too sure about this, but then Clarke figured this was pretty much the complete opposite of the experience that she'd had with Costia's parents, so it wasn't necessarily all that surprising that she was having a little bit of a hard time understanding it. She looked down again, then back up at Clarke as she put her phone back in her pocket. "I should probably go."

Clarke's heart sank. "Do you have a test tomorrow?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "It's not until the afternoon, but Anya asked me to try to get back tonight if at all possible. Given the fact that she let me take her car at all, I figure I should probably do my best to accommodate her."

"You can just come home with me tomorrow," Clarke said. "My test isn't until Tuesday, but—" She stopped as Lexa shook her head, looking amused again. "What?"

"If I rode with you, how would Anya's car get back to her?" Lexa asked. 

"Oh. Right." Clarke could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. "Long night for me, too."

"For both of us," Lexa said. "It's okay. But I _should_ go."

Which was really her looking for permission to leave, which Clarke didn't want to give. She wanted Lexa to stay, because as long as Lexa was here, she felt like she had a place to belong. Once Lexa left, it would be Mommy, Daddy, baby... and Clarke. The way-too-big-for-this-shit half-sister. 

But keeping Lexa here would be selfish, and Anya hadn't had to lend Lexa the car at all, and then she would have had to go through all of this on her own with no respite, no source of comfort, no shelter in the storm. So she pretty much owed her one. Probably more than one. She would just have to suck it up and deal.

"Okay," she said. "Did you already pack up or do we need to go back to the house?"

"I already packed," Lexa said, and it sounded like an apology. 

"Okay," Clarke said again, because there wasn't anything else she _could_ say. She put her arms out, and Lexa hugged her, holding her tight, her lips pressed against Clarke's hair, and she could feel her breathing, could hear the words that she wasn't saying: _You know that I don't want to go, that I wouldn't leave if I didn't have to. You know I would rather be with you._

Or maybe she was just imagining it, because that's what she needed to hear. She closed her eyes and held on for just a minute longer, and finally let her go. "Do you want me to walk you to the car?"

Lexa shook her head. "I remember where I parked," she said. 

"Text me when you get home?"

"I will," Lexa said. "And I'll see you tomorrow. Just let me know when you get in. If I don't respond right away, it's probably because I'm in my final. I'll get back to you as soon as I can."

Clarke nodded. "I will," she promised.

Lexa hesitated, then reached out to pull Clarke in again, kissing her once, quickly, softly, before letting her go. "I'll talk to you later," she said. "Good luck."

"Thanks," Clarke said, trying to resist the urge to reach up and touch her lips like some kind of smitten schoolgirl. But it had surprised her a little, given the fact that it was no longer the middle of the night and the hallways were bustling with people, including plenty of visitors who might have Opinions about whether or not two girls should be kissing in the hallway. But Lexa had probably weighed the odds and decided it was worth it to take the chance...

It felt nice to be worth taking a chance on.

She went back into her mother's room, where she had to remind herself that breastfeeding was a natural, normal thing and that women should not be forced to cover it up or hide it... and she really couldn't _see_ anything, anyway... but it was still her mom. 

"Marcus," Abby said, and he quickly handed her one of the receiving blankets to drape over. "Did Lexa go home?"

"Yeah," Clarke said, sinking heavily into a chair. "Anya needed her car back, and she has a test tomorrow afternoon anyway."

"Remind me who Anya is?"

"Lexa's roommate. And best friend." 

"Right." Her mother smiled. "I'm still getting used to the idea that there are going to be people in your life that I don't know and might never meet."

"I'm sure you'll meet Anya at some point," Clarke said, although she wasn't actually sure why she was sure of that fact. She just assumed that if she and Lexa stayed together, eventually her Mom would meet Lexa's family, and that was Anya more than anyone. She had a harder time imagining a scenario in which her mother would ever meet Lexa's father. 

"Were you going to head back today, too?" her mother asked. "I don't think they're letting me out of here until tomorrow. Apparently when you're the patient, your own professional opinion doesn't count when it comes to your care." She smiled wryly. "I guess I should be happy for the opportunity to rest and have help while I can."

"You'd _better_ have help when you get home," Clarke said, glancing at Marcus. 

Her mother smiled. "I will," she said, "don't worry. We've had plenty of conversations about the equitable division of labor."

"She handles the input. I handle the output," Marcus said, smiling. "And the cooking, but that's safest for everyone involved."

Clarke couldn't help smiling back at him. She still didn't know him well, but he was starting to grow on her. It was obvious that he genuinely cared about her mom. Only time would tell if it would last, or if he would crack under the pressure. But her mom was smart, and if she'd had doubts anywhere along the way (or at least up until a certain point) she wouldn't have let things get to this point. And it wasn't like she had a history of bad decisions in the relationship department. Things had been rocky between her parents at the end, but they'd been together for almost twenty years leading up to that, and maybe they would have figured things out if they'd had the time.

"Speaking of which, I'm going to run down to the cafeteria... or maybe across the street for some real food. Do either of you want anything?" 

A brief conversation about the relative merits of the nearby restaurants later, Marcus left to go retrieve food for all of them, and Clarke was alone with her mother, who was no longer nursing, but still held the sleeping baby in her arms. 

Clarke came over and perched on the edge of the bed so that she could see her better; she hadn't really looked at her all that hard the night before. She'd been exhausted and just wanted to get home and curl up with Lexa and sleep.

"She's... not as wrinkly as last night," she decided, "or as red."

Abby laughed. "I'll take that as a compliment," she said. "She's healthy, and that's what matters."

"So what you're actually saying here is that I was cuter," Clarke said. "Because otherwise you would have argued that she was the most beautiful baby that you've ever seen."

"You were an exceptionally good-looking baby," Abby said. "I don't know what happened."

"Hey!" Clarke tried to glare, but she couldn't stop the laugh that bubbled up. "I'm only going to let that slide because it's Mother's Day."

"Come here," her mother said, holding out her free arm, and after a second's hesitation, Clarke slid up so that she was next to her, curled against her so that her mother had one daughter in each arm. 

"Lexa told me what you said," Clarke said after a minute. "Thank you."

"I hope she knows I mean it," Abby said. 

"I told her you did."

"Okay." 

She felt her mom's lips on her forehead, and she closed her eyes and just let herself be in the moment, accepting it for what it was. She knew that it wouldn't – couldn't – last, but just because something was fleeting didn't give it any less value. 

She woke up a little while later when Marcus came back, and climbed out of the bed so that she could eat the food that he'd brought back for her. 

"You never did answer if you were leaving tonight," her mother said.

"Oh. Do you think they're going to release you tomorrow morning?" 

"First thing tomorrow, they said. And I'm going to hold them to it."

"Then I'll stay the night," Clarke said. "As long as I get home with enough time to do some studying tomorrow, I'll be fine." She'd decided that if she could, she wanted to be there when they saw the nursery, so she could report back to Lexa.

"You don't have to stay here with me the entire time," her mom said. "If you want to go back to the house where you can have some peace and quiet to study, I won't be offended, I promise."

"Maybe after I eat," Clarke said. She wasn't sure she would actually be able to focus any better in the house that was not her home than she was here, but her mom was right that there would be fewer distractions. Except she had the wifi password, so there was still the entire internet. But maybe she just needed to Netflix and chill for a while, too. 

"Call me if you need anything," she said when her food was gone, going over to the bed to hug her mom. Marcus was holding Vera, so she could actually hug her properly, and she held on for maybe a little longer than an average hug, but it had been a long weekend, and a long couple of years, really, and it felt good to just be held for a few minutes. Her mother didn't seem to be in any hurry to let go, either.

"You do the same," she said, smoothing back Clarke's hair. "Let me know that Lexa got home safe," she added as Clarke was turning to go. 

"I will," Clarke said, not even trying to hide her smile. Six months ago if you'd asked her if she cared what her mother thought about what she did or who she was with, she would have said no... and she might have even believed that she meant it. Now... having her mother care not just about her, but about Lexa... it meant the world.

She had just gotten to the condo when she got the text from Lexa letting her know that she was home safe.

**CLARKE:** Good. I'll let Mom know.

**LEXA:** ... why?

**CLARKE:** She asked me to.

**LEXA:** WHY?

**CLARKE:** She likes you. It's a good thing, bae.

**LEXA:** If you say so. Gotta deal with Anya. TTYL.

**CLARKE:** Tell her thank you for the lasagna!

**LEXA:** Will do.

**CLARKE:** In case I fall asleep early, good night, Lexa.

**LEXA:** Good night, Clarke.

She tried to study. She really did. But her eyes kept drifting shut, and she finally gave up and turned on the TV... and woke up in the morning when her phone beeped again with her 'good morning' text, which she barely had time to respond to before she was getting another message, this one from her mother saying they were on their way home.

Clarke looked around, making sure that she hadn't left a mess anywhere, and managed to make herself presentable before she heard the key in the lock. She watched as Marcus held the door and her mother stepped through with the baby carrier, and it was all so weird and surreal and she didn't belong here, she definitely _did not_ belong here, and all she wanted was to be with her friends and family, with Lexa.

Her mother looked at her and smiled a little sadly. "You look like you're getting ready to head out," she said.

"I am," Clarke agreed. "But there's something I want you to see first."

Abby frowned. "What is it?"

"Both of you," Clarke said. "All of you." She led them down the hall to the nursery, pushing open the door and getting out of the way so they could step inside. "Marcus said it wasn't done, so Lexa and I..." She shrugged.

Her mother's hand came up to her mouth, and her eyes filled with tears. She pulled Clarke into a hug so tight she could barely breathe. "Thank you," she whispered. "Clarke, sweetheart... thank you so much. This is... this means..." She couldn't finish.

"You're welcome," Clarke said. "I hope she likes it."

"I'm sure she will," Abby said. "It's perfect."

"Thank you," Marcus echoed, smiling at her. "I was dreading having to do all of the unpacking..."

"Now you don't have to," Clarke said. 

"Tell your... Lexa thank you, too," Abby said.

"You can call her my girlfriend," Clarke said. "Although I kind of like 'my Lexa'."

"'Girlfriend' just feels... reductive, somehow," Abby explained. "We need better words."

"We definitely do." Clarke looked at them, the happy family looking around at the nursery, all smiles (well except Vera who was too young to smile yet). "I'm gonna head out," she said. "I'll call you when I get there."

After one last hug from her mother, she grabbed her bags and got into her car, pointing herself back toward home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you all enjoyed the holidays, and Clexathon (if you were following it). I didn't get to all of the prompts that I was given, but I've saved them so I may still do them in the future. And yes, you can keep sending them to me... just know that I'm setting any kind of time frame for when I might get to them. Also, if you send me a prompt anonymously on Tumblr, I can't reply because then the message disappears. But I do look at them and add them to my list!
> 
> For anyone curious, not counting the chapters that were posted during the month or the stuff that I'd written in the past and never posted, I wrote over 56,000 words for Clexathon, and I think at least 5 of them have being ongoing things, either as multi-chapter fics or series. Oops. But hey... more Clexa to enjoy, right?


	110. Lexa

"Are you sure it's okay?" Lexa asked. "I wasn't invited." Because it was easier to ask if Clarke was sure than to say that _she_ wasn't. 

"I don't think there were actually invitations issued," Clarke said. "It's basically a family-friendly frat party." Her features twisted into a bemused frown before she laughed. "Yes, I am aware of how weird that combination of words is. But it's a big picnic for all of the graduating seniors from Bellamy's frat house. There will be tons of people there. Don't worry."

Lexa suppressed a sigh. There was no point in arguing; Clarke would just find some way to convince her to do exactly what she was didn't want to. Hell, she would probably even manage to convince her that it would be a good idea, or good for her, or something. But she guessed that probably in the grand scheme of things doing things to make Clarke happy _was_ good for her.

"Octavia will be there," Clarke added, "which means Lincoln will be there, unless O isn't ready for the meet the parent moment, because we both know they are basically incapable of playing the 'just friends' game. So there will be people there that you know other than me."

"Fine," Lexa said. "Let me get changed."

"You look fine," Clarke said, with a little too much emphasis on the last word as she waggled her eyebrows.

Lexa rolled her eyes. "This is what I wore running," she said. "It's sweaty and gross. I'm changing. And showering. Probably not in that order."

Clarke laughed and flopped down her bed. "I'll be waiting." Again, with the eyebrows. 

"Don't make promises you can't keep," Lexa said, and grabbed her bathrobe before shutting first one door, then another, between them. She lingered longer than was really necessary in the shower, but she needed some time to collect herself, to gather her resources, muster the troops to face the battle that she was about to walk into. Anya would probably tell her that thinking of a party as a battle that had to be won was not the best mindset, but Anya wasn't here. She was busy helping out with some official something-or-other that one of her professors didn't want to deal with and so had delegated to her. 

When she got back to her room, Clarke was still sprawled on the bed, but she'd found a sort of scrapbook-slash-photo album that Lexa had found in a box under the bed that she must have left out. She assumed that her father must have given the box to Anya at one point when she was retrieving Lexa's things to move them here, and she hadn't really had a chance to go through it all. 

She sat down on the edge of the bed and leaned over Clarke to look over her shoulder. "Anything interesting?"

"Where is this?" Clarke asked, tapping on the corner of a picture. 

"A temple in Japan."

"You've lived in Japan?" 

"I didn't tell you that?" Lexa asked. "Yes, I've lived in Japan. I think that was a school trip that we took, but it might have been somewhere that I went with my father." 

"You had a good eye even then," Clarke said, then grimaced. "I say, having no actual idea how old you were when you took it."

"Sixteen," Lexa said. "Or thereabouts. Japan was where we lived before we moved back for my senior year." Which made it sound like it was intentional, like her father had actually done something for her specifically, which was definitely not the case. But it meant more than the name of the base would to Clarke; it fixed it as the place before the place she'd met Costia.

"So not that long ago," Clarke said.

"Feels like a lifetime," Lexa said. 

Clarke rolled over, which put her almost directly under Lexa, and slid her fingers into her hair, pulling her down into a kiss. "Don't go there," she said softly. "Stay here with me."

Lexa knew better than to ask if that meant they weren't going to the graduation picnic-party- _thing_. _Here_ wasn't a physical place, but a mental one, an emotional once. "I'm here," she said, and she was. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Good."

They stayed like that for another minute, then Lexa pushed herself up and got dressed, trying to find the balance between being comfortable, looking good, and not looking like she'd tried too hard to look good. She ended up in jeans and a sort of loose t-shirty top, and a pair of slip-on Vans because all other shoes were too much effort. Clarke pronounced her gorgeous (but she was biased), and after a little debate, they decided to walk to the party instead of driving, because odds were very good that there would be nowhere to park.

By the time they got there, the party was already in full swing. Lexa hung back, letting Clarke try to find her friends (their friends, she ought to say, but with this many people making this much noise, she wasn't feeling particularly friendly). Finally Clarke tugged her hand. "I see Bellamy," she said. "Come on."

She followed Clarke through the crowd, and after a few collisions with people who were either rude, clumsy, tipsy, or some combination of the three, they stood in a little pocket of semi-calm. Clarke let go of her hand to hug a tall guy with floppy dark hair and a big smile. "Congratulations!" she said, as he put her back down on her feet. 

"Thanks," he said. His gaze drifted to Lexa, still smiling, and he offered a hand. "Bellamy," he said. "You must be the infamous Lexa."

"I don't know about infamous," she said, shaking his hand briefly. "Nice to meet you." 

"Nice to meet you too," he said. "I've heard a lot about you."

Lexa forced herself to smile and hoped it didn't come across as a grimace. "I can't say the same." It came out ruder than she intended, but there was no taking it back so she just straightened her shoulders a little and acted like she didn't notice how the words could be construed. 

"Hey!" Octavia said, bouncing up behind Bellamy and putting her arm around his waist. "I see you've met my brother."

Lexa couldn't help looking back and forth between them, searching for a resemblance and finding none. It was pretty obvious that they didn't share a father. But blood wasn't everything when it came to family, and it was clear from the way they looked at each other – and from what Octavia had once said about Bellamy trying to shelter her from her mother's mental illness when they were growing up – that they were close. "Briefly," she said. "I'm afraid of why he's calling me infamous."

Octavia laughed. "Nothing bad. I mean, I may have told him that you've beat me up once or twice, but I'm pretty sure I made it clear that it was a learning experience." 

Lexa forced another smile. "You're paying to get beaten up," she joked. "I just want to make sure that you get your money's worth."

"Where's Mom?" Bellamy asked. 

"With Lincoln," Octavia said. "She actually likes him."

"I'm pretty sure it's impossible to _not_ like Lincoln," Clarke said. "He's just one of those guys." 

"That's what I'm hoping," Octavia said. "Because we really don't need any drama."

"He's got my stamp of approval," Bellamy said, "which I think counts for something."

"How is she?" Clarke asked. "In general, I mean?"

"She's okay," Bellamy said at the same time Octavia said, "She's pretty good, thankfully." Which Lexa took to mean that she was on her medications, and wasn't swinging toward one pole or another at the moment. Which had to be a relief for both of them; she couldn't imagine what it was like to have to worry about your mother causing some kind of scene at your graduation. Not that she knew if their mother caused scenes, or if she just... disappeared into herself, or what. She didn't know that much about what being bipolar meant on a day-to-day basis, and the effect it might have on those around the person actually suffering from it, and she wasn't about to ask.

She didn't have to wait long to see for herself that at least for today, Ms. Blake seemed just like any other parent here: proud of her son, and maybe a little overwhelmed, but generally happy. There was another round of introductions, and Lincoln winked at Lexa, edging toward her as the others talked, leaning down to murmur, "Happy wife, happy life, huh?"

She almost got him with the elbow she threw at his midsection, but he managed to dodge at the last second, laughing. She tried to flash him her meanest, most intimidating sparring face, but she couldn't help the grin that broke through. It was good knowing that she had an ally here.  
As they were getting food, she saw Raven hanging out on the fringes of the party, and went over to say hello, since it offered respite from the crowds. "Hey," she said. 

Raven looked up and smiled, patting the space beside her. "Hey. Clarke?"

"She came for Bellamy."

"My friend Gina wanted to come. She graduated today too." 

The name seemed familiar, but Lexa couldn't quite place it. "Nice of you to come with her."

"Free food," Raven said. "Hard to pass up."

"There's that," Lexa agreed. But she didn't see that Raven actually had any. "Did you already eat?"

"Gina's getting it for me," Raven said. "She insisted."

"Okay," Lexa said, kind of glad that she didn't have to offer, because she didn't want to deal with Raven's frustration at being treated like she wasn't capable of doing it herself. Which she was, of course, but sometimes it was easier to let other people help you out. (Not that that was a lesson that Lexa had ever really absorbed, either, but she was working on it. She'd kind of had to accept it last summer when she actually _couldn't_ do things for herself, because even if the flesh was willing, the spirit was weak.)

A minute later, another girl joined them. She had a round face with a warm smile, and a halo of light brown curls. "Here," she said, handing Raven a plate and plopping down on her other side. "I kind of just got you a little bit of everything."

"Thanks," Raven said. "Gina, this is Lexa. Lexa, Gina."

"Nice to meet you," Gina said. 

"You too," Lexa said. "Congratulations."

"Thanks!" Gina replied brightly. "Sometimes it felt like I was never going to make it, but here I am." She took a bite of potato salad, and when she was done chewing and no one else had picked up the conversation asked, "What year are you?"

"That's complicated," Lexa admitted. "I should be starting my junior year, and technically, credits-wise, I am. But I changed majors, and some of the classes I took really don't carry over, so it may end up taking more than four years to finish."

"You can't make stuff up during the summer?" Raven asked. 

"Some of it, maybe... but not all of it, and honestly, I don't want to. I'm okay with it taking a little longer if it means that I get to keep my sanity." There was the issue of the _cost_ of five years of undergrad versus four, and then law school on top of it, and also the fact that her father might very well try to kill her for not doing things the "right" way, but that was a battle for another day. 

"If it does take you longer," Raven said, "then you and Clarke would actually graduate at the same time, instead of a year apart." 

"There's that, too," Lexa said. She could never admit to her father that that had been part of her thinking when she'd decided not to try to push through without breaks just to graduate in time. He wouldn't appreciate the fact that she was making decisions based on anyone but herself. It wouldn't matter that that wasn't the _only_ reason. She'd considered (and was still considering, because maybe in a few months she would feel differently and she could take classes next summer and add extra classes to her remaining semesters) graduating on time and applying to law school, then possibly deferring, but it would be easier if they were both looking at post-grad schools at the same time, making the decision together by balancing each of their needs. 

Of course that was assuming that they would still be together then, and that was a lot to assume... but not too much to hope for, or to dream of. Her father might not understand it, but she didn't think it was a bad thing to want to include others in your dreams of the future. 

"Clarke is one of your friends that stayed spring break, isn't she?" Gina asked Raven.

"Clarke and Octavia, yeah," Raven said. "They're around somewhere. Octavia's brother Bellamy was in your class." 

"Cool," Gina said. "I think I might have had a class with him back during freshman or sophomore year. A lit class focused on mythology."

"You remember people from your freshman year classes?" Raven asked. 

"You don't forget the kid in class with the weird name who is constantly correcting the teacher," Gina said.

Raven laughed. "Gotcha. Speak of the devil."

The rest of the group had found them, and soon they were spread across the grass, forming a little circle with people trying to have conversations in every direction. Lexa slid down from her place on the wall to sit next to Clarke. "It's not so bad," Clarke said, "right?"

"It's not so bad," Lexa agreed. And it wasn't. It was strange to be in a group and actually feel like she belonged in it; she'd never really had that before. Costia had tried to make her part of her group in high school, but most of them had never quite trusted the new girl who had showed up and turned Costia into someone she'd never been before (at least in their way of seeing things), and freshman year they'd theoretically shared a group of friends, but Lexa had always held herself just a little bit apart. Here, now... she didn't think that Octavia and Raven and Clarke would have let her do that if she'd wanted to. 

And maybe, just maybe, she didn't want to anymore.


	111. Clarke

"For the millionth time, Mom, it's _fine_ ," Clarke said, then swore as she nearly dropped her phone, which she'd been trying to hold between her shoulder and her ear with limited success. She managed to grab it before it hit the floor, and this time she held it securely, straightening her back and stretching. " _I'm_ fine."

"I just wish that I could be there," her mother said. "It's not right that you have to do this on your own."

Clarke rolled her eyes. "One, I'm not on my own. Octavia's got Bellamy and Lincoln coming to help. I've got Lexa and Anya. It will be done in no time, because it'll be Team O versus Team Clarke and they're all competitive as hell. We'll barely have to lift a finger. Two, you just had a baby. Like, _just_ had a baby. You're still recovering, and you're probably sleep-deprived, and you would just get in the way."

"I could send Marcus to—"

"No," Clarke said, before she could even finish. "Maybe at some point we'll get around to doing some kind of bonding, but this isn't the time, or the place. You need him there more than I need him here. Having him help would just stress everyone out." She grabbed a folder and flipped through it without really processing what she was looking at. She finally gave up and just dumped the whole thing into the recycling bin they'd dragged in from the hall. 

"Okay," Abby said. "Okay. But you'll let me know if you need anything. Promise me."

"I promise," Clarke said. "Okay? Just chill, Mom. I've got this."

"I'm sure you do," her mother said. "I just... feel like I'm letting you down as a mother, that I'm making you grow up too fast or—"

"You're not," Clarke said. "Mom, seriously. Whatever you're feeling, just... It's just your feelings. Which are probably all messed up and hormonal. It's not reality. The reality is that this dorm room is not that big, and we're already going to have six people going in and out of it, which is probably two too many. I'll call you tomorrow, once we're settled into the apartment, okay?"

"Okay." The word was more of a sigh. "I love you, sweetheart."

"Love you too. Go sleep or something." Clarke tapped the button to end the call before her mother could say anything more, tossing it down on her bed, then realized that if she left it there it was likely to end up accidentally packed in one of the myriad plastic containers, and shoved it in her pocket instead. "Why did we decide that it would be a good idea to wait until the last minute to pack?"

Octavia looked up from the magazine she was flipping through. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said. " _I_ was done packing _hours_ ago."

Clarke chose not to call her on her exaggeration; they hadn't even _started_ packing hours ago. But Octavia was pretty much already done, her clothing stuffed into one giant duffel, except for the few things she didn't want to risk wrinkling, which were hanging in a garment bag that had been improvised by stealing one of the giant black garbage bags that were intended for the hallway bins and cutting a slit in the bottom to poke the hangers through, and the rest of her stuff in various other bags and boxes. 

"I guess I just have a lot more shit than you do," Clarke said. "What about all of your school stuff?"

Octavia jerked her head toward one of the boxes. "Books are in there. I'm hoping I can get more selling them online than I would selling them back to the bookstore. The papers... I just dumped them. I'm never going to need or use them again. Anything important is saved on my computer."

"Point," Clarke said. She gathered up all of the various notebooks and folders and pitched them. Maybe she would regret it later, but she seriously doubted it. She began to stuff her clothing into her suitcase, but her mother's voice echoed in her head that it would all fit better if she folded it, so she took it out and started over. "It's weird to be leaving and not going home," she said. 

"Yeah," Octavia said. "But at the same time, it's kind of a relief. Like... we're finally actually getting to be adults. Like for real adults. I mean, I've done the whole having a job and paying bills things before, but now at least when I'm doing it, it's because they're my bills, and there's no one else that's supposed to be responsible for them. And I won't have to worry about coming home and not knowing what I'm going to find." 

Clarke could hear the slight edge of guilt in Octavia's voice, but she wasn't sure what, if anything, she could or should say to assuage it. It was different from her not going home to her mother; her mom had Marcus to support her, and baby Vera to worry about. She wasn't alone, and she was also stable (if a little over-emotional at the moment). With Octavia staying for the summer, and Bellamy as well, their mother was on her own. Which she should be able to handle. She was the adult, after all. But from the bits and pieces that Octavia had told her, it wasn't always like that. Her mother might go for months being completely fine, and then all of a sudden she would swing one way or another, and everything would fall apart, and they would find themselves in the role of caretakers to their parent. 

"Maybe—" Clarke started, but Octavia shook her head.

"Can we not talk about it?" she asked. "I don't... Let's just not talk about it."

"Okay," Clarke said, and then she was distracted by the buzzing of her phone in her pocket. "If that's my mom again..." she grumbled, but it wasn't. It was a text from Lexa.

What time do you want us there tomorrow?

**CLARKE:** Want? Or need?

**Lexa:** I'm not entirely sure how to take that. What time should be arrive tomorrow?

Clarke laughed softly. She wasn't actually sure how she'd meant it, so Lexa had every reason to be confused. 

**CLARKE:** We have to be out by noon.

She hit send, then realized that that still didn't answer the question. "Hey O, what time are Bellamy and Lincoln getting here?"

"Eight," Octavia said. "I know, it sucks, it's early, but Bell has to get to work by one, and we figured maybe if we did things early we would beat the rush."

Clarke groaned, but the time wouldn't faze Lexa, or Anya either. They would probably have already gotten up and gone for a run before then. Her phone buzzed again.

**LEXA:** ???

**CLARKE:** Sorry. Eight, apparently.

**LEXA:** I'll bring you coffee.

**CLARKE:** You are a goddess among women.

**LEXA:** And yet it's the coffee you'll worship.

**CLARKE:** Hey. Priorities.

**LEXA:** Right. I'll see you tomorrow. 

**LEXA:** Good night, Clarke.

She traced her finger over the familiar words as if in doing so she could somehow reach through the phone and touch Lexa herself. Technology being what it was, it might only be a matter of time before that was true, which was both exceedingly creepy and kind of touching... no pun intended. 

**CLARKE:** Good night, Lexa. 

She added the little kissy-face emoji for good measure, and then turned her attention back to tossing the last few odds and ends into whatever bin they would fit in. It would make unpacking tomorrow more of a pain, but she was both tired and exhausted and she just wanted to be done. She flopped down on her bed. "First day of the summer, and I've still got to set an alarm," she grumbled. 

"You're going to have to set an alarm all summer long," Octavia pointed out. "You've got your internship thing."

"I know," Clarke said. "But I was hoping for at least _one day_ of being able to sleep as late as I wanted."

"Suck it up, buttercup," Octavia said. "When you're done getting ready can you get the lights?"

"Yeah," Clarke grumbled, hauling herself up again to change into pajamas and brush her teeth. She flipped off the lights on her way back past and crawled into bed. "Night, O."

"Night, John-boy," Octavia replied.

Clarke was too tired to throw a pillow at her, and anyway, she would just have to get up and retrieve it after. So she just made a grumpy noise and rolled over to sleep.

As expected, her alarm went off way too early, and she had barely managed to drag clothes onto her body and a brush through her hair before there was a knock at the door. Octavia pulled it open, and immediately pushed herself up on her toes to kiss Lincoln, who smiled down at her then reached in to wave at Clarke. "The girl at the front desk let us in," he explained. "I guess on move-out day they don't really care who goes in and out."

"And she knows you by now," Octavia pointed out. "Where's Bell?"

"Right here," Bellamy said, stepping into the room. "Apparently the stairs are actually faster than the elevator."

"Lazy-ass," Octavia teased.

"Conservation of energy!" Bellamy returned. "Everything but the furniture, right?"

"Right," Clarke said. "Don't worry about keeping things separated. It's all going to the same place, and we'll sort it out there."

"Roger that," Bellamy said, and picked up the nearest box. Lincoln grabbed the one that looked like it ought to be the heaviest, and Octavia laughed when he stumbled back half a step from the excess force he'd used lifting it. It was filled with bedding, and didn't actually weigh much of anything. 

"Did you need help with that?" Anya asked, and Clarke looked around the box to see her smirking. "Too heavy for you?"

"Don't even start," Lincoln said, but he was grinning. "Why don't you do some work?"

Anya crouched and lifted the box that was _actually_ the heaviest, smiling sweetly back at him. "Lead the way."

Clarke glanced over at Lexa, who just rolled her eyes. "It's going to be a long day," she said, and handed over a travel mug. Clarke breathed in the fragrant steam, her eyes fluttering closed for a minute. "Thank you," she said. "You're—"

"A goddess, I know," Lexa said, smiling at her. "Careful or my ego might not fit through the door."

Clarke smiled and took a sip. It was made exactly the way she liked it, and she found herself blinking back tears that she blamed on lack of sleep. "I love you," she said, the words just slipping out without her really thinking about it, because it was the truth and it needed to be said. She didn't care who heard, although a glance around showed that everyone else had left. 

"I love you too," Lexa said softly, reaching out to squeeze her elbow, since she was gripping her coffee with both hands. "I'm going to start bringing this stuff down."

"Why?" Clarke asked. "If we stand here long enough, they'll do all of the work, trying to prove who's got the biggest—" She stopped herself, because she realized that by saying that they were trying to prove who had the biggest dick, she was perpetuating the patriarchal concept that men were stronger and more powerful than women. Sometimes she wished that she could stuff the genie back in the bottle when it came to awareness of the messages that the things that people said all the time actually conveyed. 

"Muscles," Lexa finished for her. "And I've got skin in that game, too." She smiled and hefted a box. "You can supervise if you want to." 

Clarke grumbled, but she picked up a container of her own, setting her coffee down on the edge of her desk that wasn't her desk anymore and hoping she didn't forget it later... which seemed like there were 60-40 odds against her, because she needed her coffee to be able to remember her coffee.

They had everything out of the room in less than twenty minutes, loaded into the back of Lincoln's truck. "I'll ride with him," Octavia said. "You guys can follow."

"Wait," Anya said. "Clarke's not riding with us. She's got her own car."

"Oh, right," Octavia said. "Okay. Well, follow us or Clarke. Doesn't matter." 

"I'll ride with Clarke," Lexa said, as if there had been any question. "That way you can call me if you lose us and we can give you directions."

"Good thinking," Anya said. And it turned out that it _was_ good thinking, because with all of the cars around moving kids out of the dorms, half of them from out of town so they didn't know what the hell they were doing, despite their best efforts they lost Anya within a couple of blocks. Luckily, she caught up a couple of minutes later.

When they got there, Octavia and Lincoln were already shifting boxes and bags from the truck to the sidewalk. "Do you have your keys?" Octavia asked Clarke. "Because I think I packed mine."

Clarke jingled her keys and went to the front door of the building, pushing it open and propping it open with one of the heavier boxes. "Did we mention that we're on the fourth floor?" she asked. "And that there's no elevator?"

Bellamy and Lincoln both groaned, and Anya and Lexa rolled their eyes at them. It didn't go nearly as quickly as the moving out had gone, but in the end they still only had as much stuff as had fit in a not overly large dorm room, so with six of them working it only took a few trips.

"Here it is," Clarke said, gesturing around to the haphazardly furnished space. "Home sweet home."

"For a few months, anyway," Octavia said. 

"That's good, because I don't think I would want you living here long-term," Bellamy said. "It's not exactly..."

Octavia glared at him. "You lived in a frat house. You don't exactly get to talk about my choice of accommodations."

"There was nothing wrong with the frat house!" Bellamy said. 

"It smelled like spilled beer and sweaty jock straps," Octavia said. "We were working with kind of short notice. It was the best that we could find that we could afford, and that was only looking for occupants for the summer."

They'd sublet the place from some international students who were going back to their countries (Clarke couldn't remember what those countries were) for the summer, and sure, the furniture was a little old and the rugs were worn, and they hadn't put much effort into decorating, but it really wasn't any worse than living in a dorm.

"Why don't we get this stuff into the rooms where it belongs?" Lexa suggested, probably to stave off further argument. 

"Good idea," Clarke agreed. "Let me show you my room."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I posted another installment of the childhood friends story that I started during Clexathon - you can read it [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9241601). The notes also point you to where to subscribe to it as a series, since it's not being posted as a multi-chapter fic.


	112. Lexa

Lexa ignored the snickers and smirks they left in their wake, following Clarke down the short hallway to the room on the right. Inside there was a full-size bed, two big closets, a desk, and a bathroom. The carpet was brown and the walls were white, and there was nothing to indicate anything about the personality of the person who usually occupied it, unless they were some kind of meticulously neat person who never left anything out on any surface. 

"Only one of the closets is mine," Clarke said. "The guy whose room this is stored the stuff he didn't take with him in the other one." 

"Do you need both closets?" Lexa asked. 

"No," Clarke said. 

"Well then." Lexa set down the box on the desk and went back to the living room to retrieve the rest of Clarke's stuff. Once it was all in the room, she looked around again. "Did you want me to help you unpack, or...?"

"I can do it myself," Clarke said. "You don't have to stick around if you've got other things to do."

"That's not why I was asking," Lexa said. "Some people just get weird about other people touching their stuff, or unpacking it. They don't trust anyone else to put it in the right place." She didn't mention that she had been one of those people for most of her life, refusing her father's help with setting up her room when they moved. That had changed when she'd moved in with Anya, but mostly just because Anya had moved her stuff in for her, and she hadn't cared enough about anything at the time to have a preference about where things belonged. 

"Oh," Clarke said. "I'm not too worried about that. Clothing on hangers gets hung up, clothing not on hangers goes in drawers. Top drawer is socks, underwear, bras. Middle drawer is shirts, bottom drawer is pants. If there's a fourth drawer, that's miscellaneous other stuff, like pajamas, workout gear, stuff like that."

"Got it," Lexa said, and got to work putting Clarke's clothes away. She tried not to think about how intimate an act it actually was, touching everything that a person wore, all of the things that touched their skin and concealed it from general visual consumption. Obviously she'd seen most of it before, touched it, even... and removed it, piece by piece...

Anya stuck her head in the room, and Lexa's cheeks flushed as she hastily stuffed one of the t-shirts that Clarke slept in into a drawer. "Did you need something?"

"I just wanted to tell you that I was heading out. Raven just asked if I would be willing to lend my car's services to her moving."

"Wait, what?" Clarke looked up from the box she'd been unpacking, which as far as Lexa could tell was a jumble of things that really didn't go together, so probably the last one she packed. The box that Lexa had come to think of as the 'Fuck It' box, because it was the one that you just crammed with whatever was left when you got so sick of packing that you just decided, 'Fuck it, I'll sort it out later.' "She didn't say anything to us about moving today!"

"Everyone has to be out of the dorms today," Anya pointed out. 

"Right, I know," Clarke said, "but if she needed help..."

"From what she said, she thought she was going to have help, but then it fell through. She knew that you and O were also moving today, but she didn't know that I was helping, so she called me, I guess."

"We're coming, too," Clarke said. 

"I don't think—" Anya started, but she didn't even bother to finish. She just rolled her eyes, and Lexa shrugged and smiled. If Clarke had decided they were going, they were going, whether Raven needed three people to help her or not. 

"Should we take both of our cars?" Clarke asked. "I don't know how much stuff she has..."

"Probably better to bring both, just in case," Anya said. "Even if her stuff will fit in one car, it's will probably need the back seat to do that, and then all of the people won't fit."

So they took too cars, and if Raven was surprised to see all of them, she didn't let on. She just told them which boxes were fragile, and let them do their thing. As it turned out, they only needed Anya's car, but she'd been right about people not fitting once the stuff was in. 

"Gina will be there to help us move the stuff in," Raven said. "You two can go back to your place. We'll be all right."

"You sure?" Clarke asked. "It's really not a problem if—"

"I'm sure," Raven said. "Thank you for coming, though."

"Of course," Clarke said. They got back into her car, but instead of heading back toward her apartment, she turned the opposite direction. "Target," she said in response to Lexa's questioning look. "I realized that I don't actually have any sheets that will fit the bed. Extra-long twin isn't going to cut it."

"No they aren't," Lexa agreed. 

Target thankfully wasn't too busy – not like the madhouse it would be if it was a move-in day rather than move out, as everyone discovered all of the things that they'd forgotten to pack, or hadn't thought of, and needed to get them while mommy and daddy were still around to pay for them. They headed for the back of the store where all of the bedding was, and as they looked at the sheets and comforters, a wave of... Lexa wasn't even sure what... washed over her. It couldn't be nostalgia, because that was the feeling of thinking back on something and remembering it fondly, and she had no memories like this. 

Was there a word for the feeling that you got when you were living a moment that you would, or wanted to, look back on fondly at some point in the future? If there was, she didn't know it, even in German. She looked over at Clarke, who was looking at the sheet sets, her forehead crinkled into a frown. 

"Responsible adult or overgrown child?" she asked, quietly enough that Lexa wasn't sure if she was actually asking her or if she was just talking to herself. 

"Get whichever ones you like best," Lexa said. "Just keep in mind that usually the ones with the fun designs are made of polyester."

"Ugh," Clarke said, turning over the package for the shark sheets. "You're right. Responsible adult it is, I guess." She picked out plain colored sheets, two sets, and dumped them in the cart, then moved on to look at the blankets and comforters. "You need to pick out some pillows," she said. "I can use the ones from my dorm, but there's no extras for you."

Lexa blinked, looking everywhere but at Clarke until the burning in her eyes subsided. The person she'd been six months ago would have hated the person she was now, who let herself _feel_ things, who felt things so deeply that she teared up about _pillows_. But that wasn't really what it was about at all. It was about the fact that Clarke was talking about it like it was the most normal thing in the world, like it wasn't any kind of big deal at all that she was thinking about them sharing a bed, a room... 

Costia had talked about what it would be like when they had their own place: what colors they would paint the walls, hardwood floors versus carpets, whether the kitchen cabinets should be light or dark... She'd been obsessed with HGTV, and planning their future home, their dream home... but that was all it had ever been. A dream. They hadn't even shared a dorm room, which had been Lexa's choice, and she'd never regretted it. 

This was the reality of that dream, only there had been a change in casting, and the whole story had shifted along with it. 

"Hey!" Clarke called, "look at this!" 

Lexa turned the corner into the next aisle, and there Clarke stood, with a big gray knit octopus perched on her head. She plucked it off and tossed it at Lexa, who caught it and turned it around to look into its felt eyes. "You're ridiculous," she said. 

"It's cute!"

"I didn't say it wasn't," Lexa said. 

"My mom said I could buy whatever I needed."

"And you _need_ an octopillow?"

Clarke paused, looking at her strangely for a fraction of a second, and then she grinned. "Well now that you've named it, yes!" She took it from Lexa and put it in the cart along with the sheets and blankets she'd picked out. "Where are your pillows?"

"I..." Lexa's jaw worked, but no words came out, and she saw Clarke's smile fade into something more gentle, her eyes soft with understanding. 

"Come on," she said, reaching out to hook one finger with Lexa's pinkie, leading her to the aisle that was just shelves and shelves of puffy white rectangles. She looked over them for a minute, and then pulled one down off the shelf. "Do you want one or two?"

"Two," Lexa said. 

Clarke grabbed another. "There. It's crazy how many different options there are. It's enough to give a person a headache." 

"Was there anything else you needed?" Lexa asked. 

"Yeah, but I'll grab them quick."

"Okay," Lexa said. She trailed behind Clarke as she chose towels and wash cloths in a brilliant emerald green, her eyes skimming over everything and seeing little of it. She wondered if she would ever just be normal again, if she would ever be able to get through an entire day without something bubbling up to the surface that she didn't expect and didn't know how to process. It had been a year, almost, and it didn't matter how many times she was told that you couldn't put a time limit on grief, that it follows its own schedule and that it was two steps forward and one step back a lot of the time, she still felt like she was getting it all wrong somehow.

Once they were back in the car, Clarke reached over and took Lexa's hand and squeezed it. She didn't say anything, and Lexa was glad because she was pretty sure that whatever she said would have only made it worse, because it would either be exactly the wrong thing... or exactly the right one, and sometimes that was worse. Because sometimes you weren't ready to hear the thing that you needed to hear, even though you needed to hear it. 

Lexa just wished that every good moment she had wouldn't immediately be followed by a fit of guilt-induced melancholy. She'd said goodbye to Costia. She'd moved on. Why couldn't she let go? How could memories of things that they had talked about but never done haunt her? 

"I'm going to need that hand," Clarke said softly. "At least for a minute."

Lexa let go, tucking her hands between her knees before realizing that that made her look small and fragile and insecure, so she moved them back to lay loosely in her lap, breathing in slowly and letting it out again until she stopped feeling like her heart was beating itself out against sternum.

Clarke took her hand again once they were back on the road, heading straight so that she could drive with one hand, and stayed that way for the rest of the drive. They carried the bags up, and Clarke took everything out of its protective plastic and dumped it in the washer, or at least as much as would fit, and started it running. Octavia had left a note on the fridge that she and Lincoln had gone out to do some grocery shopping and if there was anything that she wanted, Clarke should text her. "So we've got the place to ourselves," Clarke said, maybe trying to lighten the mood, but Lexa felt like she was sinking no matter how hard she tried, and maybe it would be better if she just left, and didn't drag Clarke down with her. 

"We should probably go finish the unpacking," Clarke said. "Make this place a little bit more like home and less like an empty box." 

And then Lexa remembered, and how the hell had she forgotten? But Anya was gone, and she didn't have her own car, and the distance between Clarke's place and hers was longer than she could walk in a reasonable amount of time. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and quickly texted Anya. 

**LEXA:** I forgot Clarke's housewarming gift at the house.

She got a response a minute later. 

**ANYA:** I'll bring it over later. Along with dinner.

**LEXA:** You're the best. 

**ANYA:** I know.

Lexa laughed and rolled her eyes, and Clarke looked up at her, one eyebrow arched. "Anya," Lexa said. "She's going to come back over later. If that's okay. She says she'll bring dinner."

"Then that's definitely okay," Clarke said. 

They went back to Clarke's room and got to work unpacking all of her stuff, finding homes for everything. After a little while Clarke went to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer, chattering about how that had been one of the biggest perks about this place over some of the others that they'd looked at, and if she never had to use shared laundry machines again it would be too soon, except she would be going back to the dorms next year so too soon was roughly four months away. 

Octavia and Lincoln got home a little while later, having spent an 'epically ridiculous' amount of money to stock the fridge and cupboards. "On the plus side," Octavia said, "we probably won't need to shop again for a while."

"And Anya's bringing dinner," Clarke said. "So we don't actually have to figure out how to turn ingredients into food quite yet." 

"Did I tell you what my asshole brother gave me?" Octavia asked. "A cookbook called 'Help! My Apartment Has a Kitchen!' As if he was the only one who _ever_ cooked in our house. I make a mean box of generic macaroni and cheez-with-a-z." 

"I once burned water," Clarke admitted. 

"How do you burn _water_?" Lincoln asked. "That's not even..."

"Well, you put water on to boil to make pasta, and then you forget about it for so long that all of the water evaporates, leaving you with a slightly charred pot and no water."

"Wow," Lincoln said. "That's... wow."

"We'll figure it out," Clarke said. "If all else fails, I can just go to Lexa's." She grinned at her, and Lexa smiled back, hoping that it looked more real than it felt. If it didn't, Clarke didn't comment, and then they were all too distracted with deciding whether they wanted to move around the living room furniture, and whose job it was going to be to take out the trash, and all of the minutia that went into living with a person that Lexa had never really had to figure out because she'd always had all of those things decided for her, first because her father didn't think there was any point in including her in those kinds of plans, and then later because she had no interest in being included, because she had no interest in anything. 

Would she, at some point in the future? Would they? 

The dryer buzzed, and Clarke went to retrieve her sheets from it. Lexa followed her back to the bedroom and helped her make the bed, tucking in the sheets and smoothing out the blankets until everything was perfect, with their pillows propped up against the headboard and the Octopillow in the center, its arms spread out around it. 

Lexa's phone buzzed, and she pulled it from her pocket. 

**ANYA:** Let me in. I've got food.


	113. Clarke

It took Clarke a minute to find the panel with the button that would buzz Anya into the building, and then she realized that it would probably be polite for her to go down and help her bring the food up, so she made the long descent down to the lobby. Which turned out to be a good thing, because Anya was juggling two huge pizza boxes and several bags. She immediately handed over the bags to Clarke. She took one look at Clarke's face and grinned. "I said I would bring dinner," she said. "I never said I would _make_ it." 

"That's true," Clarke said. "How's Raven?"

"Settling in," Anya said. "At least I assume. Once we got the stuff up to the apartment, I took off. I didn't figure she needed me hanging around when she had Gina to help her." 

"I guess not," Clarke said. "Thanks for this." She hefted the bags, which upon inspection proved to have several pints of ice cream and all of the fixings for ice cream sundaes. She was honestly a little surprised, given how healthy the food that Anya normally made was, but maybe she'd decided that today qualified as a special occasion. 

They finally finished the climb back up to the fourth floor, and soon they were all scattered around the living room with pizza and soda, conversation pretty much stopped as they stuffed their faces. Even Lexa, who'd been pretty quiet all afternoon, disappearing at intervals into herself and the dark places that her mind went when memories and feelings that she didn't have the time or emotional capacity to deal with came up, ate with some appetite, which Clarke took to be a good sign. 

After the pizza had settled, they dug into the ice cream, and before long they were all in carb-induced states of near-catatonia. They half-heartedly discussed playing cards or a board game or something, but the truth was that it had been a long day for everyone, and they were beat. It wasn't even eight o'clock and Clarke was already thinking about how nice it would be to curl up in her new-to-her bed (ignoring the fact that the bed actually belonged to someone else, but she'd made sure to put a mattress pad under her sheets so she wasn't really touching anything that he... or any of his body fluids... might have touched) and just pass out.

"I think I'm going to head home," Anya said. 

"You sure?" Octavia asked, but it was half-hearted at best, and she didn't even bother to lift her head off of Lincoln's shoulder. 

"Yes. I think I'm going to take a nice long bath and soak away all the memories of living in a dorm that were brought to the surface." She smirked. 

"If you hadn't lived in the dorms you probably never would have met me," Lexa pointed out. "But maybe that's one of the things that you regret." Clarke thought that she probably meant it as a joke, but there was a tense moment as the words just hung between them. 

"You wish," Anya said finally. "You're stuck with me." Her tone was light, but the words held weight, and their eyes locked for a moment. It was Lexa who looked away first. 

She turned to Clarke and smiled. "I guess I'll see—"

"Don't go," Clarke said, before she could even finish, because the second that the idea that Lexa might leave was planted in her head, she knew that she didn't want it to happen. This was her first night here, and like people always said, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. She wanted to start off on the right foot, set the right tone, to start as she meant to go on. She forced a smile, looking over at Octavia and Lincoln. "Don't leave me alone with _them_. If the ice cream didn't give me diabetes, watching the two of them definitely will."

"Hey, no one said you had to watch," Octavia countered. 

"It's kind of hard not to," Clarke said. "Lincoln's too big to ignore."

Octavia stuck out her tongue, and Clarke rolled her eyes and laughed, but then she looked back at Lexa and she felt the smile drop away. She needed her to know that she was serious. "Stay with me."

"Okay," Lexa said, her voice dropped almost to a whisper. "I'll stay."

Anya nodded. "I'll see you tomorrow then," she said. "Let me know if you need a ride."

"I will," Lexa said. "Thank you."

"G'night, everyone," Anya said, and headed out, leaving the four of them alone... which totally wasn't awkward at all. 

Almost simultaneously, Octavia and Clarke pushed themselves up so that they were one step closer to standing, and then they both paused, like they weren't sure what the other was going to do. "I know it's lame," Clarke said, "but I think I'm going to get ready for bed."

"Is that—" Octavia started, but then she stopped and looked at Lincoln, and Clarke wondered if she'd missed him nudging her or pinching her or giving some other indication that it would probably not be in her best interests to finish that sentence. For a second she looked annoyed, but then she just settled back against him. "Okay," she said. "Good night." 

Clarke held her hand out to Lexa, but wasn't entirely surprised when she didn't take it. This was still new – not so much between them anymore, although even that was still, to an extent – and they were still figuring out the dynamic of this place, and if Lexa wasn't comfortable with being affectionate in front of Octavia and Lincoln... well, they would figure it out eventually. It didn't have to be tonight. Lexa followed her down the hallway, and they shut themselves in Clarke's room. 

"I don't have anything to wear," Lexa pointed out. "I didn't think... I didn't consider the possibility that I might need it."

"You don't _technically_ need to wear anything," Clarke said, raising her eyebrows at her. "I wouldn't object if you—" 

Lexa looked away, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her phone, which was buzzing insistently. "Oh shit," she said. "I'll be right back, okay?"

"What?" Clarke said, immediately on edge. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Lexa said. "I just forgot about something that I'd asked Anya to bring. She almost forgot, too. Luckily she noticed before she drove away. I'm just going to run down and get it. I'll be right back." And then she was back out of the room, moving with more speed and energy than Clarke had seen from her all day. She was back a few minutes later, a little out of breath from her sprint down the stairs and back up again. "I can't believe I almost forgot," she said, holding out a large flat package wrapped in brown paper. "This is for you."

Clarke set it on the bed and loosened the tape carefully, sliding her finger under the edge of the paper and peeling it back, not because it had any value in and of itself, but because she had no idea what was inside of it, and judging from how intently Lexa was looking at her, it was probably something that she'd put a lot of thought into, and Clarke wanted the moment to last as long as it could.

Finally, she pushed back the wrapping and looked down... and found herself looking at her old house, the place that she'd called home for her entire life up until she went to college, the place that now belonged to someone else. It was a photo collage, with the house itself at the center, but around it was photos of various bits and pieces of the interior. Her father's chair. The window over the sink that looked out into the back yard. The poorly tended and wildly overgrown flower garden in the front. The wall in the hallway decorated with her art and achievements. A cup of coffee next to a cup of cocoa on the table. Her bedroom mirror with the picture of her father tucked in the corner. 

There were more, but they blurred as her eyes filled with tears. "Lexa," she said, but it came out as something between a gasp and a sob. 

And then Lexa's arms were around her, holding her tight, anchoring her as her world tipped on its axis, upended itself, and spun altogether too fast all at once. "A house may just be a box to keep memories in," Lexa whispered, "but that doesn't mean it's not nice to have something to remind you once in a while."

"Lexa," she said again, and then a third time, "Lexa..." Because it was the only thing she could think of to say, the only thing that mattered. 

"Clarke," she replied, tipping up Clarke's chin and pressing their foreheads together, their noses brushing. "That was your first home. Now you can take a part of it with you wherever the future takes you."

"How...?"

"You weren't with me every minute," Lexa said. "After the diner, and then going through your photo albums... I was really glad I'd brought my camera with me."

"It's beautiful," Clarke finally managed. "Lexa..."

"Clarke."

Their lips met, and parted, and met again, and it wasn't exactly desperation that had them clinging to each other, but it wasn't exactly _not_ desperation, either, because what Clarke wanted - _needed_ \- now more than anything was to lose herself in Lexa, and find herself there, to connect herself to this incredible, amazing girl who somehow, through some strange twist of fate, had found her way into her life and decided she didn't want to leave.

"Don't go," she said again. 

"I'm not going."

"Stay with me."

"Always," Lexa said, the word sweet as Clarke kissed it from her lips. 

Clothing was shed, hands gliding over skin as it was exposed, and Clarke wasn't sure where Octopillow ended up as she tugged back the blankets and sheets, and then fell back against the pillows, pressed down by Lexa's weight, breaking apart and being put back together with every kiss, every touch, and every cliché in the book was flying through her head and she tried to just shut it all down, to just feel and not think, but it was hard, it was so hard, and she was unraveling and why, _why_ was this so different from every other person, every other time...? What was it about this girl that made her so irresistible, made Clarke want to protect her and surrender to her at the same time, that made her heart soar with elation and pound with terror all at once because when Lexa said 'always' she meant it, she didn't say things she didn't mean, and Clarke _believed_ her.

But they were young, weren't they? Too young to make those kinds of promises. Was it a promise? You could mean something wholeheartedly _now_ and in a week or a month or a year it wouldn't be true anymore. 

That's not what it felt like, though. That's not what it felt like _at all_. When Lexa said 'always' a road stretched out in Clarke's mind that had no end. There were bends she couldn't see past, roots to trip over, mountains to climb, but it stretched on and on and on...

"Lexa," she whispered, just that, just her name, over and over again against her lips, the skin of her throat, pressed to her heart, and down and down... and then back to her lips again, looking her in the eyes and searching for... what? An echo of her feelings, but did it count as an echo when it came back just as loud? 

"Clarke," Lexa whispered back, her voice husky and raw, and everything about her was soft, out of focus, undone, and Clarke draped herself over her to keep her safe until all of the scattered pieces of her could find their way back into a whole, more perfect and beautiful than before, if that was possible. 

"If I tell you something," Clarke said, nuzzling her neck, "do you promise not to laugh?"

"Is it funny?" Lexa asked. 

Clarke couldn't help the huff of breath, almost a laugh, that that drew. "I don't think so."

"Then I promise," Lexa said. 

"Before..." Clarke pressed her palm over Lexa's heart, felt the beat of it slowly returning back to normal. "After you kissed me, but before you came back from going to... to say goodbye Costia... that night you called to say you were coming home. All I could think about was you... and that kiss, and kissing you again. I..." Her cheeks flushed, and she didn't know why she was telling Lexa this except she didn't want them to have any secrets, even stupid embarrassing ones that were of no consequence. "I got myself off. Thinking about that kiss."

Lexa went still for a moment, and then the fingers of one hand slid into Clarke's hair, pushing it back from her face. "Just the kiss?" she asked. "Nothing else?"

"Nothing else," Clarke said. "It didn't feel right to imagine more when I didn't know if there ever would be."

"Just the kiss," Lexa repeated, and it kind of sounded like maybe she was trying not to laugh, but maybe Clarke was just imagining that. "And you got off just thinking about that."

"Well... obviously I was, y'know, _touching_ myself while I was thinking about it..."

"Isn't there a song about that?" Lexa asked. "'I don't want anybody else. When I think about you I touch myself.'" Her voice was low, soft, a purr or a growl, and her lips had curved into a smile. "Was there something that you wanted me to _do_ with this information?" 

Clarke wasn't sure what to say, because there really wasn't, and yet... But it didn't matter, because Lexa didn't wait for her to answer. She pushed herself up on one elbow, rolling them both over, and then their lips met, and there were kisses and there was _kisses_ , and this as definitely the latter, and Clarke felt herself going liquid, the core of her melting into an aching heat, and they kissed until they were breathless, and then Lexa's lips were on her cheeks, her jaw, down her throat and over her shoulders, but her hands stayed still, fingers laced through Clarke's and pinning them gently against the mattress so that other than her lips on Clarke's skin and the soft brush of her hair where it had come loose (or Clarke had pulled it loose, she couldn't remember...) that was the only point of contact. 

"It wasn't... a challenge..." Clarke gasped as Lexa's hot breath ghosted over her skin, cooling it where it was sweat-damp in the crux of her thighs, but Lexa just looked up at her, smirking, and apparently it _was_ , and one that Lexa had every intention of winning. It was torture, but torture of the most exquisite and delicious variety, and Clarke knew that if she asked, if she begged, Lexa would give in, give her whatever she wanted, but she wasn't going to, not unless and until she had to.

Was it possible to come just from kissing someone? Just from their lips and tongue and yes, occasionally teeth on your skin, all over your body except in the place that you most wanted it, but close, so close, close enough that her hips jerked outside of her own conscious control, and her fingers clenched Lexa's so hard it was on the very edge of pain, and it probably wasn't possible but it was almost, almost...

"Lexa..." she groaned, and Lexa looked up, and at the look on Clarke's face which Clarke was sure was pure desire and desperation, she nodded slightly, and then kissed her again, _there_ , and her tongue flicked out and fuck, _fuck_...

Lexa held her after, as the shaking subsided and the tension eased, and kissed her soft on the temple, the corner of her eye, and then her lips, sealing all of the promises that they made without words. 

"Good night, Lexa," Clarke breathed as Lexa drew the covers up over them, to keep the world out or at least that's how it felt. 

"Good night, Clarke," she whispered back, and Clarke closed her eyes and slept.

In the morning, she woke still tangled with Lexa, awake before her by some miracle, because Lexa was usually up with the sun. It didn't last, because her shifting made the other girl stir, roll over to face Clarke fully, her long fingers brushing back Clarke's hair. They were silent for a long moment, the pause pregnant with expectation, and then Lexa smiled softly like she'd just remembered something, and brushed her nose against Clarke's before kissing her. "Good morning, Clarke," she said, the words a puzzle piece slipping into place, or a key twisting to unlock the day.

Because this was their ritual. Every night and every morning, yesterday and today and tomorrow and years and years from now somewhere down that long road that Clarke could imagine, living who knows where and doing who knows what. The details didn't matter as long as the foundation was there to be built on.

"Good morning, Lexa," Clarke replied, because it was.


	114. Lexa

Lexa looked over at Clarke, who was frowning at a tablet in her lap, scrolling up and down the page like she was re-reading the same thing over and over again... which was entirely possible, given the fact that she'd apparently been given a huge amount of documentation about the research project that she would be assisting on that she needed to get caught up on before she started working on Monday. Lexa was starting her own internship then as well, and she nervous as hell about it because she still wasn't 100% sure she was making the right choice, switching to law, and this job would be the make it or break it point for the decision... even though she'd already filled out all of the paperwork, because she had to before she could register for classes for the fall semester. 

But that was still days away, and there was something else weighing even more heavily on her mind, but every time she tried to put it into words, they caught in her throat, and nothing she did seemed to be able to dislodge them. 

Finally Clarke put the tablet aside. "I can't," she said. "I'm reading the words and not comprehending a single one of them. My brain has reached max capacity, and it's not going to hold any more tonight, no matter how hard I try to cram it in there." She stood up, her hands on her hips as she leaned back, then tipped herself forward again. "Let's go out."

"Out?" 

Lexa cringed at how stupid she sounded, like she was having as hard a time comprehending the suggestion as Clarke was reading scientific research reports. 

"Yes, out," Clarke said with a laugh. "That's what most people do on a Saturday night. Most young people, anyway. Which we are, despite current evidence to the contrary."

Lexa started to shake her head, then stopped herself, because if Clarke wanted to go out, wasn't it her duty as her girlfriend to accompany her? She couldn't just tell her to call Octavia or Raven and see if they wanted to go... could she? And she didn't want Clarke to go, but it would be selfish to ask her to stay. Add to that the fact that she really shouldn't be alone with her thoughts right now, when they were likely to spiral down into dark places at the slightest provocation. 

"Where do you want to go?" she asked. 

"I hadn't gotten that far," Clarke said. "I assume you don't have a fake ID, so we would have to find someplace that doesn't care about technicalities like age or something."

"Oh," Lexa said. "Out like drinking out."

Clarke looked at her, her eyes narrowing slightly, and Lexa couldn't tell if she was annoyed or just trying to figure her out. "That's what most people do."

"I'm not much of a drinker," Lexa said. "Never really developed a taste for it." Which was both true and not true, because she'd certainly had more to drink than was probably healthy while she was in Australia, but she'd never actually enjoyed it. She didn't say that that was because she was afraid of where her head would go if she let the partitions she'd built up inside of it start wobbling. She didn't say that the times she'd been drunk since this time last year, really drunk and not just buzzed, had been messy, ugly affairs, one of which had nearly ended very badly. 

"Would it bother you if I drank?" Clarke asked. 

"No," Lexa said, then, "I guess it depends what kind of a drunk you are."

"Generally a happy one," Clarke said. "Although..." She grimaced. "Somewhat prone to making bad decisions, I guess, but since I know that the only person that I'm going to end up in bed with is you, I should be all right."

"Then I don't mind," Lexa said. 

"But you're probably not much of a bar person, either," Clarke mused, "and you claim you don't dance, so that really limits our options. I don't just want to go the movie route... we've been sitting down for too long already."

"If you want to go to a bar or a club, I'll go with you," Lexa said. "It's not all about me all the time."

"I don't want to go out somewhere and have you pretend to be having a good time when I know that secretly on the inside you're miserable," Clarke said. "As far as I'm concerned, that's the same as lying, which you've told me over and over again that you don't do."

Which wasn't actually what she'd said. She'd told Clarke that she didn't say things that she didn't mean. She hadn't said that she always told the truth. But that was what it had become, and Lexa tried to live up to it.

Lexa sighed. "What are our other options?" she asked. "Do you know what your other friends are up to?" She tried to think back to what she and Costia had done on weekends, but a lot of that had been hanging out with people that were Costia's friends who tolerated her, and going out and doing things where yes, she had in fact mostly been hiding the fact that she was miserable. 

"I could find out," Clarke said. "What time is it?"

Lexa glanced at the clock. "A little after five. Still pretty early."

"Okay," Clarke said, and tapped on the screen of her phone. Lexa assumed that she was probably calling Octavia, because of all of them it seemed like Octavia was the one most likely to know where the party was. Lexa knew now that some of that was just a persona that she projected, but sometimes that kind of thing became a sort of fake it 'til you make it kind of thing (and damn, she was just full of clichés tonight, wasn't she? but that was what happened when you were trying to think around the black hole that you'd been trying to steer away from for a year now) and you ended up being in the right social loops to know those kinds of things even if you never acted on that knowledge.

She looked down at her own phone and realized that she had no one to call. Anya, maybe, but in a lot of ways Anya was as much of a homebody as she was. It was part of the reason that they got along well – they both got up early and went to bed early and neither of them came stumbling in in the middle of the night, obnoxiously drunk and leaving a mess in their wake. 

"Nothing?" Clarke said. "Fine. I'll call Raven. Maybe she's less lame than you – okay, fine, _we_ \- are." A pause, and then, "Yeah, I'll let you know." She looked over at Lexa. "Strike one," she said. "She's with Lincoln, but they hadn't made any plans. Let me see what Raven's up to." She dialed again, her phone pressed to her ear, but hung up after a few seconds. "Voicemail," she said. "I guess I'll have to text her like a normal person." 

Lexa got up to get herself some water from the fridge, just to have something to do while Clarke was typing. Since she was still typing when she got back, she assumed that Raven had actually responded. "We clearly need to make some not lame friends," Clarke said. "Raven doesn't have any plans either." Her phone buzzed again. "Wait, she says that Gina is suggesting a game night."

"Like board games?" Lexa asked. 

"I assume," Clarke said. "Hold on." She typed again, and a few seconds later read, "'Yes like board games but not lame ones like Monopoly, apparently. Do you want to come over or not?'" She looked at Lexa. "Do we want to go over?"

"Do you?"

"Board games are more my speed than a club," Lexa said. 

"So yes?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Clarke typed in their RSVP. "She says to invite Anya, too."

"Raven? Or Gina?"

Clarke looked at her. "Does it matter?"

"I guess not," Lexa said. She texted Anya, while Clarke extended the invitation to Octavia and Lincoln, and a little while later they found themselves parked half a block away from Raven's apartment, walking up to the building. Lexa's stomach was in knots, which was stupid because she knew these people, even _liked_ these people, and there was no reason to worry about spending time with them. She felt Clarke's hand slide into hers and squeeze, and that brief moment of contact helped shore up her walls and seal the chinks in her armor, and she squeezed back and nodded.

Anya was already there, and she smiled and waved at Lexa, making room for her to sit next to her on the couch. "You okay?" she asked, while Clarke joined the discussion on what kind of food that they wanted to order. 

"I'm trying to be," Lexa said, because that was the most honest answer. 

"Have you told her?" 

"No," Lexa said. "I don't want to bring her down."

Anya shook her head. "Has it ever occurred to you that it might work the other way?" she asked. "Maybe instead of you bringing her down, she would bring you _up_." 

"It's not her burden to carry," Lexa said. 

"Let her decide that," Anya said. "She loves you, Lexa. Give her a chance."

The doorbell buzzed again, signaling Octavia and Lincoln's arrival, and behind them was Bellamy, who had apparently decided that it wasn't a party without alcohol, and brought some. Lexa realized then that those not old enough to legally drink were outnumbered in this group... and that she would probably be the only one who didn't partake. She would claim it was because she was the designated driver if asked, even though they'd come in Clarke's car, but she hoped that people would just leave well enough alone. 

They finally decided on Chinese food, and then it was another battle over what they wanted to order and how much, and then there was the inevitable squabbling over splitting up the bill, and who had cash and who didn't, until finally Clarke pulled a card from her wallet and called in the order herself. "We can sort it out later," she said. "Okay?"

"Okay," everyone agreed... and then the disagreement became over what game to play, and it was all good-natured, all in good fun, but it was loud and grating and Lexa finally excused herself to the bathroom when she couldn't take it anymore, shutting and locking the door behind her. It was becoming a habit – a bad one – and she wished that she could break it but today was not going to be the day that that happened. All she could do was take a few deep breaths and splash some cold water on her face and try to get herself under control so that she could face the noise and clamor before someone (Clarke) felt it necessary to come and check on her. 

She stayed there in the relative quiet for as long as she thought she could get away with, then forced herself to open the door and rejoin the gathering. Clarke looked up and smiled at her, and when she sat down, she slid her arm around Lexa's waist. "We're playing Fluxx," she said. "Apparently you don't need to know the rules because the rules keep changing."

"I'm not sure—" Lexa started, but Clarke cut her off. 

"You can be on my team," she said. 

"It's not really a team game," Bellamy said. 

"I don't care," Clarke said. "You said the rules keep changing. So I just changed the rules, and you can have a team if you want to."

Bellamy rolled his eyes, but he didn't argue. He just dealt the cards. 

Slowly, as everyone focused on the game and their outbursts were just the typical ones of joy and displeasure that came along with winning or losing, Lexa started to relax. The fact that some part of Clarke stayed consistently pressed against her helped, kept her grounded in the moment, and eating helped too, once the food arrived. She'd forgotten that somewhere along the way, apparently. 

After Fluxx and food and alcohol for all of them except Lexa (and Anya, who had driven herself and apparently had decided that she'd rather not have to wait around for it to wear off like the other drivers would have to), they pulled out Cards Against Humanity, and Lexa had to turn off her brain because the chances that something would come up that would trigger some landmine in her head vastly outweighed the chances that would be able to remind herself in time that it was just a game.

"You can be on my team," Clarke whispered. "It'll be okay." 

"There's no—" Bellamy stopped, and Lexa didn't even need to look to know that he was probably being glared at by more than one person. But apparently that wasn't enough to fully stop him, because he looked right at her and asked, "Why come if you're not actually going to play?"

"Clarke wanted to go out," Lexa said. 

"And she's not allowed to do that without you?" Bellamy asked. 

"I asked her to come with me," Clarke said. "Why are you being like this?"

"Because we're all here having fun, and there she is, just sitting around acting like she's better than us, like this is all beneath her and she can't get down off her high horse or her throne or whatever she thinks she's sitting on to play with us," Bellamy said. 

"Bell!" Octavia said. "What the fuck? She's not hurting anyone. If she doesn't want to play, she doesn't want to play. So what?"

"Oh, you're on her side too?"

"There are no _sides_ ," Octavia said. "Has anyone ever told you that you turn into an asshole when you drink? Because you do."

"I'm not being an asshole," Bellamy argued. 

"You kind of are," Gina said. "Come on. She's fine."

"We were all just fine until you decided to blow up over nothing," Raven pointed out. 

"Oh yeah? You like having her just sit there with her nose in the air and that look on her face?"

"You need to—" Anya started, but Lexa held up her hand, and she stopped. Everyone stopped, and looked at her, and Lexa realized then that she didn't actually know what she was going to say, that she hadn't really planned to say anything, that she just wanted them all to stop fighting.

"What is it that you want from me?" she asked, and now she _was_ looking down at him like he'd accused her of. Before she'd just been distracted, but now he'd earned her disdain. 

"I want to know why you're here," he said. "Why you came when you obviously don't want to be here, instead of just letting Clarke come on her own and actually enjoy herself."

"Clarke asked me to come," Lexa said. "I am here because she wants me to be. I cannot speak for her, but I don't think that my participation, or lack thereof, has actually impacted her enjoyment of the evening." The words were clipped, almost stilted, too formal, but it was that or skipping words altogether and just wrapping her fingers around his throat (which was tempting, god but it was tempting...) which would turn everyone else against her when right now it seemed like they were mostly on her side, since apparently a line had been drawn. 

"It hasn't," Clarke said. "The only thing that's impacting anyone's enjoyment of the evening is you, Bellamy. Seriously, what is this really about?"

"You know what?" Bellamy said. "I don't need this." He got up, stumbling as he made his way to standing, and Lexa's heart froze.

"Don't," she said. "You're not going anywhere."

"And who the hell is going to stop me?" he demanded. He grabbed his keys from the table where they'd been dumped and made for the door.

He didn't get far. Lexa was smaller than he was, but she was also faster, better trained, and sober. Before he could make it two steps she had him pinned against the wall, one arm pressed against his chest, the other hand on his throat, and she didn't care, she didn't care what anyone thought, because there was no way she was letting him out that door. 

"You want to know why I'm like this?" she demanded. "You want to know why I'm finding it really hard to care about _games_ right now? Because a year ago – a year ago _tomorrow_ \- my girlfriend was hit by a drunk fucking driver and _killed_. So I've been teetering on the edge of the giant crater that that left in my life that I only just climbed out of, trying not to fall back into the pit. And if you think for _one second_ that I'm going to let you go out there and possibly leave someone else to feel like I'm feeling..." She shook her head and let him go, then held out her hand. "Give me your keys. Now."


	115. Clarke

"Give me your keys. Now."

She hadn't known. How had she not known? It made sense, the timing of it. Lexa had said that Costia had died not long after the end of the semester last year. She just hadn't really thought about it... and somehow missed that that was all that Lexa was thinking about. 

When Lexa had pushed Bellamy up against the wall, she'd frozen. Everyone had frozen, including Lincoln and Anya, although Clarke suspected that theirs was more the stillness that came before explosive action, and they were just waiting to see if it was going to be needed. 

She didn't think that anyone even breathed until Bellamy dropped his keys into Lexa's outstretched hand, and her fingers closed around them. She turned her back on him, either assuming that he wouldn't attack her in retaliation, or that if he did, she could defend herself. 

"Everyone," Lexa said. "Everyone who has been drinking, give me your keys. Even if you live here. Even if you don't have to drive anywhere. Give me your keys."

Clarke found her purse and silently handed her keys over, and watched as Lincoln, Gina, and Raven did the same. 

"When you're ready to leave, I'll give them back if I think you're sober enough to drive," Lexa said. She looked around, and then sat back down next to Clarke. "I'm sorry if I ruined everything, but I won't... I won't." 

"It's okay," Gina said after a few seconds. "I'm so sorry for your loss."

There were nods and murmurs of assent, and Lexa thanked them, but the silence now was awkward. No one knew what to do. Should they just carry on playing like nothing had happened? Was that even possible? If Lexa wasn't holding everyone's keys, she would have suggested that they just go home, and it was tempting to see if she could convince Lexa to hand the keys over to Anya so that they could do so. 

"I'm sorry I was an asshole," Bellamy said finally. "I didn't know."

"You had no right to know," Lexa said. "It was none of your business."

Bellamy's eyes narrowed. "I said I was sorry."

"And I appreciate you saying it," Lexa said. "But I am under no obligation to absolve you, or forgive you."

"You attacked me."

"I stopped you from doing something stupid."

"You put your hands around my throat!"

"One hand. It got your attention. If you think I'm going to apologize for that, you don't know me very well. But I guess that's the whole point, and the whole problem, isn't it?"

"Lexa," Clarke said. "Please."

Lexa looked at her. "I'm not sorry, Clarke. I did what I had to do. The only thing injured is his pride."

Clarke closed her eyes, because as much as she wanted to say that violence was never the answer... maybe in this case it was? Lexa was right that she hadn't hurt Bellamy... except for the blow to his ego, but sometimes that was the worst thing that you could injure in a man. Or a person... but no, mostly a man. 

"Maybe we can play something else," Gina said. "If anyone still feels like playing."

"What about Uno?" Octavia said. "Do you have Uno?"

"I do," Gina said. "Sounds good to me. Anyone opposed?" When no one said anything, she went to get the deck of cards. 

Clarke leaned in to Lexa and took her hand. "I didn't know," she said. "If I'd known..." What? If she'd known, would she have suggested they just stay in? Would that have been any better? Or would it have just allowed Lexa more time to think, and remember, to pick at the fragile edges of the still-healing wounds until they reopened and bled?

Lexa shook her head. "I'm okay," she said. "I was, and I will be again."

Clarke wasn't so sure that the rest of the party would recover quite so easily (and she suspected Lexa was stretching the truth a bit when she said that she was okay) but Gina dealt out the cards to everyone anyway, including Lexa, and Lexa didn't say anything about preferring not to play, so they just started the game.

By the end of the night, what had happened certainly hadn't been forgotten, but people were at least making an effort to act normal, and there was talking and laughter, and Bellamy had mostly stopped glowering at Lexa. He was the only one who kept drinking, though, and finally Lexa handed his keys over to Gina when it became clear that he wasn't going to sober up enough to take them himself. 

"Where do you want to go?" Clarke asked. "Your place or mine?"

"Mine," Lexa said. "If that's all right."

"Of course it's all right," Clarke said. She hadn't really expected Lexa to answer differently, and if the roles were reversed, she couldn't imagine not wanting to be in her own space. So she drove them back to Lexa's place, arriving at pretty much the same time as Anya, who unlocked the door for them and followed them up the stairs.

Once they were in the condo, Anya looked at Lexa. "Do you need anything?"

"Are you going to lecture me?" Lexa responded. 

"Putting your hand on his throat probably wasn't the best option," Anya said, "but no, I'm not going to lecture you. I'm just going to go to bed." 

Lexa nodded, and accepted the hug that Anya offered. Clarke was surprised when Anya reached for her, but she let herself be wrapped in Anya's arms. "I know you don't need to be told," she murmured, "but take care of her."

Clarke nodded, and Anya let go, disappearing into her room. They got ready for bed in silence, and Lexa turned off the light before crawling into bed with Clarke. For a little while Clarke just listened to her breathing, waiting for it to settle into the rhythms of sleep, but it didn't. Still, she waited, because pushing Lexa to say whatever it was that she needed to say before her mind would switch off for the night wouldn't actually make the words come any faster.

Finally she started to think that maybe she didn't have anything to say at all, so she opened her mouth to tell her good night. Before she could say it, though, Lexa whispered, "I need you to do something for me. With me. Tomorrow. Please."

"What is it?" Clarke asked. "I will. Of course I will. But what is it?" Because Clarke knew that Lexa would never ask her to do anything that would put her in danger, and that would be the only reason that she would say no to her. 

"Is it okay if I don't tell you? There's somewhere I need to go, something I need to do. I just want you there with me for moral support."

"Okay," Clarke said. She assumed that whatever it was must have some connection to Costia, which maybe would have made someone else's stomach squirm, because who wanted to be dragged on a walk down memory lane about the person you love's ex, who they never stopped loving? But she was with Lexa now, and Costia was not a threat to that. 

"Okay," Lexa echoed. 

They said their goodnights, and if Clarke held Lexa a little tighter than usual, she got no complaint about it. If anything, Lexa held her back just as tight. 

After lunch the next day they got in the car, Lexa giving her directions until they parked in a little shopping plaza that only contained two storefronts: a convenience store and a tattoo parlor. It didn't take a genius to figure out which one was their destination. Lexa pulled open the door and Clarke followed her in, looking at the artistically decorated lobby as Lexa checked in. A few minutes later, one of the artists came out and showed Lexa a design. 

"Yes," Lexa said. "That's... that's good. That's perfect."

"Okay. Just give me a few minutes to finish getting things set up, and I'll come get you and we'll get started."

Lexa nodded, and as promised, a few minutes later the girl returned and brought them both back. She had Lexa sit in a chair that was kind of like one of those seated massage chairs, and Lexa pulled her braid to the side to expose the back of her neck. 

"The nape of the neck is pretty sensitive," the artist – her name was Cheryl – said. "I don't know if you have any other tattoos, but—"

"I do," Lexa said. She pushed up the sleeve of her shirt to show the one on her upper arm. "The other is down my spine."

"Oh," Cheryl said, smiling. "I guess I don't really need to warn you, then." She cleaned off the area, and then shaved away the tiny hairs there before laying down the stencil that had been created of the tattoo. She looked over at Clarke, who was standing sort of awkwardly to the side. "I'm sorry! You can grab a chair – I think there's one in the hall."

Clarke went and got it, and put it in front of Lexa, although because of the setup of the chair she couldn't really see her, or anything. She reached out to brush the back of her hand so she would know she was there, and Lexa caught her fingers and squeezed them. She watched as Cheryl inked the needle (was it just one needle, or was it more than one?) and the gun started to buzz. Lexa squeezed her hand, harder this time, and Clarke took the other one and held them, stroking the backs of them with her thumbs gently. 

"So is there a story?" Cheryl asked as she dipped the gun in ink again. 

"Yes," Lexa said, her voice slightly strained as needle touched flesh again. "It's... a year ago today my girlfriend was killed by a car. It took me a long time to... to get to a place where I could even really deal with that. We had... I had thought that she was the love of my life, y'know? She was my first love, and I thought it was forever. We told each other it was forever."

"Hence the infinity symbol," Cheryl said.

"Right."

"But it's broken. Or... incomplete."

"Because there's no such thing as forever," Lexa said. "Forever isn't a promise you can make, because you never know what is going to happen in your life. You never know what's going to come up. You might change, or they might change, or..." She paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "But that doesn't mean that everything ends, either. Time keeps progressing, and life goes on. You might stumble, you might fall... but you have to pick yourself back up again. You have to keep going. And just because there's no forever doesn't mean you can't make 'for now' last as long as it possibly can."

Clarke suspected the last words were meant more for her than for Cheryl, and she brought Lexa's hand to her lips and kissed her knuckles. 

"Is this...?"

"This is Clarke. She's... She's the light that I found when I was still at the bottom of the pit."

"I'm sorry that you lost your girlfriend," Cheryl said. "But I'm glad that you found a new 'for now'."

"Me too," Lexa said. 

The tattoo didn't take long, maybe twenty minutes, and then Cheryl taped a sheet of plastic wrap over it, which Lexa was supposed to leave on for a few hours, and then wash it with unscented soap and apply a thin layer of Bacitracin, since it was, in essence, an open wound. 

Lexa thanked her, and paid, and then went back to the car, where she sat down a bit gingerly in the passenger's seat. "Thank you for coming," she told Clarke. 

"Thank you for bringing me," Clarke said, and meant it. Yes, the tattoo was a memorial to Costia, but it was also a monument to life, and its continuance, to stumbling blocks and second chances. "It's beautiful, by the way."

"Thank you," Lexa said. "It's strange, that two of my tattoos are in places where I'll never see them."

"Is there a reason that you put them there?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa shrugged, then nodded. "The one on my back... I didn't want it to be somewhere where people could see it all the time, and I needed a long stretch of skin. Also... having it along my spine was pretty much the most painful option, and I wanted it to hurt." She smiled, but it was really more of a grimace. "This one... I feel like it kind of completes the one on my back. If you look at as a journey up from the bottom, from all of the darkness, and into the light... this is the end of the journey. And the beginning. Because there really isn't a beginning and an end, except birth and death. Everything else is just... everything else."

"I love you," Clarke said. 

"I know," Lexa replied. "I love you too."

"I know." 

"Should we head home?"

Lexa nodded. "As much as I want to pretend that I'm so tough that a little pain is nothing... it's not nothing. It hurts. I'd rather be able to whimper in the privacy of my own home." But she was smiling as she said it, so Clarke knew that it wasn't _that_ bad. 

"Should we stop for ice cream on the way home?" she asked. "Ice cream makes everything feel better, right?"

"Since you can't kiss it and make it better, that will have to do," Lexa said. 

"I could while it's still covered in plastic, maybe," Clarke said. "But I don't want to hurt you."

"Better to just leave it alone for now," Lexa said. "This is going to make Tae Kwon Do very interesting..."

Clarke's eyes widened. She hadn't even though about that. "Did you tell your instructor?"

Lexa nodded. "He knows. I'll still be assisting in the juniors classes, because I don't really get tossed around in those that much, and we'll just make sure to plan things that won't involve anything coming near my neck. For adult class... it depends on whether I'm feeling up to it, but I know he'll be understanding if I say that I can't do something for a few days while it heals. People come to class with injuries all the time. You just take care of yourself and only do the things that you can."

"Just be careful," Clarke said. "Give it the time it needs to heal." She put the car in reverse and backed out of the parking lot, turning them toward home... or the grocery store, realizing too late that they probably could have gotten ice cream right at the convenience store. 

"I will, Doctor Griffin," Lexa teased.

Clarke scrunched her nose. "That's my mom, not me," she said. "At least not yet."

"Someday," Lexa said. 

"Why don't lawyers get titles?" Clarke asked.

"They do," Lexa said. "Attorney. Also, we can put Esquire after our names if we're feeling extra fancy."

"Oh, it's _that_ what esquire is for?" Clarke asked. "I always thought it was some bizarre relic from back in the day when people were still clinging to claims of nobility or something."

"I have no idea where it comes from," Lexa said, "but yes, it's for lawyers."

"Attorney Lexa Chandler Woods, Esquire," Clarke said. "That's not a mouthful or anything."

"Doctor Clarke Marie Griffin, MD," Lexa replied. "I guess that's a little more manageable."

"It all seems so far away," Clarke said. "I've only finished my first year of undergrad. I still have like a hundred years of school left before I'll be able to _do_ anything with any of it." Sometimes she wondered if it was really worth the slog. After undergrad was four years of med school, and then internships, and if she wanted to specialize in something that would take even longer, and it seemed crazy that some people would leave college and go right into careers, and she would be practically thirty before she got to do anything of consequence. 

"You'll get there," Lexa said. "If you want to, you'll get there."

"I hope so," Clarke said. _And I hope when I do, forever or not, you're still there with me._


	116. Lexa

Lexa waited until class was over and most of the students had left before she approached Aden, nudging him gently with her elbow. He looked up at her, his eyes wide, but he at least smiled a little, which was more than he'd done all class. Not that he tended to be one of the younger students who was always laughing and getting a little goofy... but today he'd been downright grim. "Good job today," she said. 

"Thanks." He ducked his head, paying too much attention to tucking his gear away in his bag. 

She sat down on the little bench nearby, leaning in but careful to respect his space. "Everything okay?"

He shrugged, and didn't say anything. 

"Okay," she said. "You know where to find me if you need to talk."

"Yes ma—Yes, Miss Woods," he said, because despite all of the times that they'd been told that they really weren't that formal here, and he could call them by their first names, really, it was okay... he still insisted on 'sir' and 'ma'am' and 'Miss' and 'Mister'. Maybe once he'd been with them a little longer and got more comfortable, that might change, but for now, they would just have to deal with it. At least he'd stopped himself before calling her ma'am, which made her feel old, and also made her squirm a little for reasons she hadn't been able to pinpoint. She and Anya had talked about it, though, and agreed that if he was going to insist on an honorific, they would both prefer 'sir'. Why couldn't sir be a gender-neutral term?

She went to change, and when she came out again the only people left in the school were Master Gustus in the office, and Aden, sitting and staring at his phone, frowning. He stood up and bowed onto the mat, then went into the office. "My mom just texted me that she's stuck at work," he said. "She doesn't know how long it's going to be. She's trying to see if her friend can pick me up." 

"All right," Master Gustus said. Lexa glanced at her own phone and saw that it was almost ten after. She remembered their instructor mentioning to her a few days back that he had somewhere to be after class today, which meant that this really wasn't all right. 

"If you need a ride," she offered to Aden, "I can take you."

Aden shook his head. "It's okay. Someone will come."

"Why don't we go wait outside at least?" she suggested. "My ride is late, too." Which wasn't actually true; she'd known that Clarke wasn't going to get there for the end of class. She'd had to go to some meeting or gathering or something to do with her research job and she'd warned Lexa that she might not be able to get there until close to eight-thirty. Since her choices were wait or skip class, she'd opted to wait. "At least we'll have some fresh air, and that way Master Gustus can lock up."

"Okay," Aden said, and went outside. Lexa poked her head into the office. "I'll stay with him until someone gets here," she said.

He smiled at her. "I appreciate the sentiment, but I can't leave until all of the students have been picked up. If I do and something happens, I'm the one that will be liable."

"What, I don't count as a responsible adult?" Lexa asked. "You pay me. I'm an official employee. That doesn't count for anything?"

"Unfortunately, not really," he said. 

"What if Aden's mother gives permission? Maybe he can text her and get her okay?" She'd met Aden's mom a couple of times when she came to pick him up, so she would probably be okay with it. That way Master Gustus could get where he needed to go, Aden wouldn't be alone, and she would have some company while she waited. 

"If she gives permission..." He frowned. "I would still have to leave you with the keys, though. I really can't lock you out."

"There's no spare key?" she asked. 

"Not here," he said. "I have one at my house."

"What time is the first class tomorrow?" she asked.

"Tomorrow there's a morning class," he said. "Nine a.m."

"Right," Lexa said. "Okay. So I'll drop it off before my internship. No big deal."

He studied her for a moment, then finally nodded. "Okay. If Aden's mother says it's okay."

Lexa went to tell Aden to text his mother and ask if it was all right if he stayed here with Lexa while he waited for a ride instead of Master Gustus. A minute later Master Gustus handed her the keys to lock up when she left, in case they needed to go back inside, she assumed, and told them good night, so she assumed that Aden's mom must have contacted their instructor directly to let him know that it was okay.

They sat down on the set of steps that led down from the dojang to the sidewalk. Aden kept looking at his phone and sighing. "I'm sorry you're stuck waiting with me," he said. "She says someone will come, but... sometimes it takes a while. Usually it doesn't happen when I'm here, but sometimes at school and stuff."

"I don't mind," Lexa said. "It's a nice night, and like I said, I'm waiting, too."

Aden nodded, and looked at his phone again. He was quiet for a little while, and Lexa watched the sun slowly sink toward the horizon. She wasn't sure how much time passed before he said quietly, "Today wasn't a very good day."

"No? What happened?"

He shrugged again. "Just some jerks at school. I know I should ignore them, but sometimes it's hard." 

"Sometimes it is," she agreed. "That stupid old saying about sticks and stones is complete bullshit." His eyes widened, and she smirked. "Shh. Don't tell anyone I said that in front of you." 

"I won't," he said, and when he smiled it actually made it to his eyes, at least a little bit. "Anyway, you're right. Like..." He shuffled his feet on the pavement and bounced his knees. "My old dojang? Part of the reason I left there – most of the reason – is because some of the other kids were just always giving me a hard time, and I just got really tired of hearing it all the time, so much that I just wanted to quit."

"What were they giving you a hard time about?" Lexa asked. Not that she couldn't guess. Kids his age – boys, especially – all seemed to have the same go-to insult. 

"You know," he said. "Calling me names. Words that I won't say." He glanced over at her. "I'm not."

"It wouldn't matter if you were," she said. "I know that it's hard to believe when it's being used to attack you, but it's not an insult." She turned toward him, because she wanted to be able to see his face and his reaction. "I hope it doesn't bother you that I am."

He looked at her, blinked. "You are?"

"I am," she said. "The person coming to pick me up is my girlfriend. Her name is Clarke."

"Oh," he said. He was quiet, thinking it over, maybe, trying to figure out how to react. "I don't mind," he said finally. "I know it's not an insult, but if I tried to tell _them_ that then they just would have taken that to mean that I was. Which I know it doesn't matter, and I shouldn't care if people think that about me or not, and I _don't_ , really. I just... I wanted to start over somewhere else."

"I probably would, too," Lexa said. "It's hard to learn when you're in an environment where you're not comfortable. A lot of what we do is some pretty serious stuff, but if you're not having any fun at all, you're probably not going to learn it that well, either. Some of the stuff I remember the best is the stuff that I couldn't get right at first, and I got teased about it, but not in a mean way. In the way that people tease when they're laughing _with_ you, not _at_ you." 

Aden nodded. "Yeah." He looked at her again. "I like it here, though," he said. "It's a lot better."

"I'm glad," Lexa said. "Look, there's Clarke now." She pointed as a car pulled into the small lot. She hoped that Clarke had noticed her sitting out here and that she wasn't alone, and would come up, rather than just sitting in the car waiting for her when she didn't actually know how long she might be waiting. 

Thankfully, Clarke was pretty observant, and minute later she came up the sidewalk. "Hey," she said, smiling. Her eyes flicked to Aden, and then back to Lexa, and she could read the question there, that eternal question in any new situation, with any new people.

"Clarke, this is Aden. Aden, Clarke." She looked back at her, gave a slight nod. Clarke nodded back.

Aden frowned slightly, looking back and forth between him. "I feel like you're talking about me," he said, "without saying anything."

_And you're too observant for you own good,_ Lexa thought, but she didn't say it. Instead she smiled, trying to take the edge off. "I guess we are, in a way," she said.

"What are you saying?" he asked.

"Just that it's okay to... be us, I guess," Lexa said. "When you're queer—" she noticed his slight flinch at the word and imagined that he'd never actually heard it used as anything but a slur; they would have to come back to that, maybe, "—you learn pretty fast that any time you're in a new situation or around new people, and you're with your significant other," she rolled her eyes at the term, "that you have to figure out who you are to each other for that particular moment. And you learn to have that conversation without words, usually, because you have to, to be safe. So Clarke looks at you, and looks at me, and I can see her wondering, 'Okay, am I just your friend now, or am I your girlfriend?' Not that it will necessarily change anything about how we act around each other, but if you know that the people around you are already aware and okay with it, you don't worry about every little word coming out of your mouth, every move you make." 

This was all probably a lot to be saying to a 13-year-old, but he was the one who'd brought it up... kind of. 

"That sucks," Aden said. "You should just be able to be yourself all the time, no matter who's around." 

"I agree," Lexa said. "Things are a lot better than they used to be. _A lot_ better. They've gotten better even within my lifetime. I honestly... I never expected that gay people would be able to get married in all 50 states, just like that, in my lifetime. I thought it would be a state-by-state slog and there would be some states that would never approve it, but... then the Supreme Court ruling happened. I didn't believe it. I really didn't believe it. Someone told me, and I assumed that they must have read something wrong, misunderstood." She shook her head. "So it's getting better. Just... not everywhere, all the time. Which sucks." She smiled at him. 

Clarke sat down next to her, bumping her hip against Lexa's as she did so. She shot a glance in Aden's direction while he was looking down at his phone, her eyebrows raised in a question. Lexa lifted one shoulder and let it fall, then mouthed, 'Later.'

Aden made a sound that sounded like a mix of a suppressed scream and a sob. "She says her friend can't come, and she'll have find someone to cover for her, but it might just take a little bit," he said. "She says she's really, really sorry."

"Who?" Clarke asked.

"My mom," Aden said. "She was supposed to pick me up but she's stuck at work."

"I can take you home," Clarke said. "Where do you live?"

Aden told her, then said, "You don't have to. I mean, if you don't mind waiting a little while."

"It's on my way," Clarke said, nudging Lexa at the same time, signaling her to keep her mouth shut because it was actually the exact opposite of on the way. "Tell your mom it's okay, we've got you covered."

Aden typed into his phone, and a second later it started buzzing. He put it to his ear, then held it out to Lexa. "She wants to talk to you."

Lexa took the phone. "Hello?"

"Hi." She recognized Aden's mother's voice, but couldn't for the life of her remember her name. "I'm so sorry about this. I'm trying to find someone to cover for me so that I can come get him, or find another friend—"

"We can drive him home," Lexa said. "Seriously, it's not a problem."

"We?"

"It would be Clarke doing the driving. My girlfriend."

The slightest pause, then, "Are you sure?"

Lexa looked at Clarke, who nodded. "We're sure. It's not a problem."

"Thank you," she said. "I owe you one. More than one."

"Don't worry about it," Lexa said. "Have a good night."

"You too." 

Lexa hung up and handed the phone back to Aden. "All set," she said. "Let's go."

They hauled their bags down to Clarke's car. Lexa put hers in the trunk, and Aden put his on the back seat next to him. "Do you know how to get there?" he asked. 

"Mostly," Clarke said. "But we have to make another stop first." Lexa looked over at her as she fastened her seatbelt, and Clarke winked. "I hope your mother doesn't have any rules about eating dessert before dinner."

"I ate dinner before class," Aden said. 

"Good. Then even if she did, we wouldn't be breaking them. I don't know about you, but I'm in the mood for a cupcake."

Lexa saw Aden's eyes light up. What teenage boy's wouldn't, when offered food of any kind, but especially food that was really, really bad for you and tasted really, really good? But then they dimmed. "I don't have any money," he said. 

"My treat," Clarke said. "It seems like we've all had a rough day." 

Lexa made a mental note to ask about it later, although Clarke wasn't actually acting like she'd had a bad day. She might just be saying it to make Aden feel better about accepting the ride, and the treat. Clarke backed out of parking lot and pulled out into the road, heading for the cupcake shop that was, in fact, in the vicinity of Aden's house, so if she'd been thinking about going there anyway, the whole 'it's on the way' thing wasn't a complete lie.

They were lucky to find a parking spot that was relatively close, and they got out and went into the shop. Lexa's mouth watered at the smell of sugar and chocolate, and they made their way up to the case, each of them finally picking out the one that they wanted. She reached for her wallet, but Clarke waved her off. "My treat," she repeated, and handed over a card to the cashier. 

They found seats at a small table, and it was maybe a little snug but they managed to arrange themselves so that left-handed Clarke wasn't elbowing anyone every time she used her fork. Because these cupcakes were too big to just pick up and bite, unless you wanted frosting all over your nose... which Aden learned the hard way. Lexa handed him a napkin and he took it, cheeks flushed. "Sorry," he said.

"Why?" she asked. 

He shrugged. "I dunno."

"If you don't know why you should be sorry, there's no need to apologize," Lexa said, as gently as she could. He was a good kid, a smart kid... even a tough kid in some ways. But there was a gentleness to him, too, that she felt duty-bound to find a way to preserve while still teaching him that it was okay to not let himself be pushed around or made to feel small.

"S—" He stopped himself at her raised eyebrow and smiled sheepishly. "I guess it's just habit."

"It's a good habit to break," she said. "Apologize only if you've done something to warrant it. Don't ever apologize just for being human and taking up space."

"Yes ma'am," he said, and for a second she thought he was going to apologize for that too, but he didn't. He lifted his chin and looked her in the eye, like he was daring her to question the respect that he chose to show her.

She didn't correct him.


	117. Clarke

Clarke watched them, and it was funny – funny ironic, not funny ha-ha – that Lexa, the girl who had told her on no uncertain terms that she did not want, had never wanted, kids, was so good with them. But then this was different. She wasn't actually responsible for Aden, not like a parent would be. She was more like a mentor, or a big sister, maybe. And Aden was older... kind of the worst age a kid could be once they were verbal, but if he had any of that middle school attitude and angst in him, he wasn't showing it now. He was more... collected, she guessed, than she would expect a middle schooler to be. More composed, more stoic, save for that growl of frustration earlier when his mom had told him that she wasn't sure when someone would be there to get him. 

She wondered, too, if this was what Lexa was like when she was that age. Maybe that's why Lexa dealt with him better than she did with the other kids (some of which she complained about after every class they showed up to). Maybe in him she'd found a kindred spirit.

Clarke hoped, for his sake, that his home life was better than Lexa's had been, at least. 

They ate in silence for a few minutes, and then Aden looked up, his eyes flicking uncertainly from Lexa to Clarke and back again. Finally he cleared his throat. "Can I ask you a question?"

"You can ask," Lexa said. "Depending on the question, I reserve the right not to answer."

Aden bit his lip, poking his fork into the frosting on his cupcake and peeling off a bit of it and examining it like he wasn't quite sure what it was. "You, um, used a word before. A word that I didn't think it was okay to use."

Lexa almost smiled. "That depends who you ask," she said. "And it depends who you are, too, to an extent." 

"What word?" Clarke asked, thinking she must have missed something, that whatever he was talking about must have been part of a conversation that they'd been having before she arrived. 

"Queer," Lexa said. 

"Oh." Clarke frowned. She hadn't caught that, but now that Lexa said it, she found herself wondering the same thing as Aden. She'd always thought it was one of those words that you didn't use unless you were trying to offend people.

"It's complicated," Lexa said, "and a lot of people don't really agree about it. Some people think that it's a slur and shouldn't be used at all. Some people want to reclaim it for the LGBT community, for a number of reasons. Without going into a whole history lecture, it's been used by the community for a long time. And yes, it's been used against us, too, but... my personal feeling about it is that it's a really useful umbrella term. Some people use gay to refer to the entire community, as a shorthand, but that doesn't really feel right to me. Labels are shit, no matter what, but we all seem to feel compelled to use them. And sometimes that's useful, and sometimes it's not. Without getting into a whole discuss of gender and how it's not binary, and how really none of this is black and white, it's all shades of gray – or rainbow – and how a lot of the terms that we have involve the word 'sexual' and it just puts that aspect of things in peoples' faces... it just seems to me like it's useful to have a word that encompasses it all without people having to reveal all kinds of personal stuff. Hence, queer. Because what else is there? LGBT leaves people out. QUILTBAG? What even is that? We're people, not sewing accessories."

"QUILTBAG?" Aden asked.

"I've heard it," Lexa said. "I still haven't figured out what the U stands for."

Clarke picked up her phone, curious now. After some scrolling. "According to Wikipedia, it's Queer or Questioning – I guess they're using the q and u from those, intersex, lesbian, transgender or two-spirit, bisexual, asexual or ally—" Lexa snorted. "—and gay or genderqueer."

"I guess that covers a lot of the bases," Lexa said. "But still, it sounds a little ridiculous. Which is why I use queer. I won't do it around people who are really upset by it, or I try not to, but..." She shrugged. "Costia hated it. She hated that I used it. And I hated that she hated it, because I felt like – rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly – she didn't really get to hate it? It had never been used against _her_."

"Who's Costia?" Aden asked. 

Clarke looked over at Lexa and saw that she'd frozen with her fork partway to her mouth. She reached across the table and put her hand over Lexa's where it lay, and watched as she slowly lowered the bite of cake back to her plate. "Costia was my girlfriend before Clarke," she said. 

"Oh." Aden looked at her for a minute with a slight frown, like he could tell that there was more to it than that, but he wasn't sure whether he should or could ask. 

Clarke squeezed Lexa's hand. "Why don't we finish up so we can get you home?" she suggested. "Do you have homework?"

"Yeah, some," Aden said. "I have a history test tomorrow, but I think I know it okay. I have some math."

"What are you doing in math?" Clarke asked. 

"Algebra," Aden said. "I'm in the advanced math class."

"Wow," Clarke said. "Good for you. What about science? What kind of science do you do in... what grade are you in?"

"Eighth," Aden said. "I'm doing earth science, even though usually you take that in ninth grade. We're doing the water cycle and weather right now. It's pretty cool."

"What will you take next year?" Clarke asked. 

"Bio," Aden said. "We're going to have to dissect things." The look on his face said that he wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that. 

"It won't be as bad as you think," Clarke said. "At least I didn't think it was, but I liked bio."

"What are you in school for?" Aden asked. 

"Pre-med," Clarke said. "Hopefully someday I'll be a doctor."

His eyes widened. "Oh wow," he said. "That's really cool."

"Sometimes," Clarke said, smiling at him. "Sometimes it's just stressful. But I guess in the end it'll be worth it." She wasn't actually always sure that that was true. Especially when she thought about how many years of school she'd been through in her life, and how many more she had left to go. It wasn't that she didn't like what she was learning, and she definitely wanted to help people... but sometimes it just seemed like there had to be a better way. 

"But you're done with school, right?"

"For the year, yes," Clarke said. "I'm working in a lab for the summer, helping on a research project."

"Is it one that uses mice?" Aden asked. 

"No," Clarke said. "No animal testing. Mostly just petri dishes and microscopes."

Aden looked both disappointed and relieved, and Clarke wasn't sure what to make of that, but she supposed in the end it really didn't matter. "I can't wait for the school year to be over," he said. "But we still have a month."

"You'll get there," Lexa said, finally speaking up again. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah," he said, eating the last bite of his cupcake. "Thank you," he said. "For the ride and the cupcake and everything."

"Any time," Clarke said. Lexa's father was supposed to be coming to help her with buying a car, and then she wouldn't have to pick her up anymore, but she meant it anyway. She'd been a bit of a latchkey kid herself, with her mother working long hours at the hospital and her dad sometimes getting stuck late working on projects, but she'd had two sets of grandparents that lived nearby who could help with getting her where she needed to be. She'd never had to worry about when or if someone would come to pick her up. 

They got back in the car and dropped Aden off, and he thanked her at least twice more before she pulled back out of the driveway. As soon as he was out of the car, Lexa seemed to crumple in on herself a little. "I should probably call his mom or something," she said, "or text her. Tell her that I just gave her son a little gay history lesson, kind of. Maybe queer theory would be a better description. Which, yes, is called queer theory, not LGBT theory or QUILTBAG theory." 

"How did you even end up on that topic?" Clarke asked. "Clearly I missed something."

"He was pretty down all through class, and when I asked him what was wrong, he said he'd had a bad day at school. Then he told me that part of the reason that he left his old dojang was because some of the other boys were giving him a hard time, picking on him by calling him gay, although I suspect there were other words involved as well. And actually, he didn't even say that that's what they'd been saying, but..." She shrugged. "Then he said that he wasn't, though, and I said that it didn't matter if he was or not, and I hoped that he didn't mind that I was."

"Did you think he would?" Clarke asked. 

"No," Lexa said. "He'd already said that he knew it shouldn't bother him if people called him that, because it wasn't a bad thing, but... It could be that what he's saying is true, that he's not gay. Or it could be a case of the lady, or I guess in this case lad, or lord, or whatever it would be, doth protest too much. I mainly did it so that if it's the latter, he knows he's got someone he can come to, someone he can talk to, who definitely understands what it's like."

"And if he's not?"

"If he's not, then he's not. I'd still rather have it out in the open. I don't like having to talk around things, or worry about him overhearing something from someone else and reacting to that in some way." She pushed herself up and stretched her shoulders, then leaned back against the seat again. "I feel like... not like I owe it to him, exactly, but I want to be as open and as honest as I can be with him. A lot of times adults won't do that. They feel like they have to protect children from things, or they feel like it wouldn't be appropriate to discuss things with them. Since I'm somewhere in between being an authority figure and a peer, I can get away with saying more than someone else might."

"Yeah, I can see that," Clarke said. "So are you really going to tell his mom?" 

"Do you think I shouldn't?" Lexa asked, and she seemed to be genuinely seeking Clarke's opinion. "It's not really my place to talk about things like that with a kid, and if he mentions it to her and she gets upset, that could come back on Master Gustus for letting me be a mentor, role model, whatever for kids, and even though she said it was okay for him to leave Aden with me until he got picked up, I'm sure that she agreed to it because he was willing to vouch for me. I don't want to put him in an awkward position."

Clarke considered that, and she could understand where Lexa was coming from. At the same time, though... "But what if you tell her, and you give her the context of how it came up, and she tries to talk to him about it and it's not something that he's ready to discuss with her? Like you said, it could be a case of him saying that he's not because he's not ready to deal with the fact that he is, and if you tell his mother about it and she brings it up and he's not ready... he's not likely to trust you again in the future, is he? And the whole point was that you wanted to let him know that he could, and that you would understand where he was coming from."

"Shit," Lexa said, like she hadn't considered that angle. Which Clarke supposed was possible, but seemed unlikely since Lexa was the kind of person who looked at an issue from every conceivable angle, and weighed the pros and cons. Maybe that was harder when you had an emotional investment in it, and no matter what her feelings about kids in general, with this kid in particular she had definitely bought in. "Then what?" she asked, looking over to Clarke. "I feel like I've just stuck myself between a rock and a hard place. Which is probably another rock."

Clarke laughed softly. "Trust him," she said. "You said that you wanted him to trust you, well... you should trust him. He knows his mother better than anyone, right? If it's something he wants to talk about, he'll tell her about it. If he doesn't, then he won't."

"You're right," Lexa said. "What would I do without you?"

"Not be full of chocolately creamy goodness, and go to bed alone," Clarke said. "It would be tragic."

"Positively Shakespearian," Lexa said. "Your place or mine?"

"Is Anya home?"

"Not at the moment."

"Then yours. You're all gross and sweaty, and we don't both fit in my shower." Clarke glanced over at her and grinned.

"We haven't actually tried," Lexa pointed out.

"I barely fit in my shower," Clarke said. "Every time I turn around, I bang an elbow."

"Poor thing," Lexa said, pouting at her. "Do you need me to kiss it and make it better?"

"Maybe," Clarke said. "And while you're at it, there are a few other places that are sore..."

Lexa pursed her lips like she was fighting not to smile. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah."

"You'll have to show me."

"Don't worry," Clarke said. "I plan to."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So apparently Lexa has some Thoughts and Opinions about these things. Poor Aden didn't know what he was asking when he asked it!


	118. Lexa

It had been a long day, and all Lexa wanted was for it to be over. When her father had called to cancel, way back during finals, she'd felt like she'd been given a stay of execution. Now she wished that this had all been done and over with a month ago. She wanted to go home and curl up on the couch (preferably not alone) and turn on the TV and not think about anything at all for a little while. And if there was nothing on TV (and she wasn't alone... or maybe even if she was...) she could think of other ways to forget the world and everything in it for a while.

But the day wasn't over. At least they'd gotten the hard part out of the way, mostly because Lexa had stood back and let her father do the talking. Let him feel like he was doing his fatherly duty, if that's what this was about. He knew more about cars than she did, anyway, and being both a military man and a lawyer made him pretty intimidating, so she was sure that he'd managed to get a better price on the car that they'd decided on – not new but not old, not big but not small, not souped up with features but not bare bones – than she would have if she'd tried to negotiate on her own. He seemed happy with it, anyway, for values of happy that involved his normal poker face instead of an active scowl. The car wasn't being financed, so there wasn't a lot of red tape to get through. The only thing that kept her from being able to drive it home that day was that the dealership needed to get all of the registration paperwork put through for her. She could come back tomorrow to pick up the keys. 

"I've got you on my insurance policy for now," her father told her, "because it was easier. I will keep you on it until you graduate college, as long as you keep your grades up. If they start to slip—"

"They won't slip," Lexa said. "Have they ever? When have I ever gotten less than straight As?"

"Fall semester," he said. "Your GPA—"

"Dropped to a 3.9-something," Lexa said. "I'll get it back up."

"You can never get it back up to a 4.0," her father said. 

"And if it's a 3.99 I'm a failure?" she countered. "Have you forgotten—"

"I haven't forgotten," her father said. "How could I forget? It's your excuse for—"

Lexa turned to glare at him, fighting against her seatbelt. "You think I'm just using it as an excuse? You think I'm _pretending_ that the death of the person that I loved affected me just to have an _excuse_ to explain away one semester of the slightest imperfection?" 

"We're not having this conversation again," he said. 

"What do you mean 'again'?" Lexa demanded. "We've had this conversation before? Because I don't remember being present for that."

"At a certain point, Lexa, you need to move on. You need to stop pitying—"

" _Pitying_? This is about self-pity to you?"

"Yes," he said. "At a certain point, you need to move on. You need to go back to your normal life. That's how it works. Bad things happen every day, but life goes on."

"Like Mom," she said. "She died, you wallowed for a while, and then you moved on. Is that what you're saying? Is that what happened? Because it really didn't – doesn't – seem like that to me. From where I sit, it looks like you never really tried to get over her. You never dated anyone else. You never let anyone else into your life at all. Your work became your life, with occasional breaks to do the bare minimum that needed to be done to keep people from thinking you were neglecting your daughter."

Her father pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant that they'd chosen for dinner, because Lexa wasn't about to ask Anya to cook for them again, and she wasn't in the mood to do anything nice for him, even though she knew that she was probably supposed to be, given the fact that he'd just bought her a car. 

It wasn’t that she wasn't grateful. It was just that she wasn't sure that he'd actually earned that gratitude. It felt more like he was trying to buy her off than like a gift. Like it was a need that she had that he was fulfilling, as he'd always fulfilled her basic needs... except attention and affection. Which it would probably shock him to learn were things that _everyone_ needed, not just the weak ones who actually admitted that they had emotions.

"What do you want from me, Lexa?" he asked. "We've already been over this. I did the best that I could, and unfortunately, it wasn't as good a job as you feel you deserved. Do you think that I wanted it to be that way? Do you think I wanted you to grow up without a mother? But I wasn't going to just try to find someone to take her place. That's not how it works."

"You didn't have to replace her with someone else," Lexa said, "but you had to replace her in my life. You had to step up and do the things for me that she did, be the parent to me that she was, because she wasn't around to do it anymore. But you didn't. You left me to figure it all out on my own. And I did. I made myself cold and hard. I built walls, and around those walls I put up fences, and on those fences I put up signs that said 'No Trespassing' and 'Keep Out'. I was a cold, empty shell of a person. Just like you. And then Costia came along, and she ignored the signs and climbed the fences and scaled the walls. She showed me that I wasn't so cold and empty after all. That I could be more, and better. That I was capable of loving. And then I lost her. But the thing is, once someone's gotten past all of your defenses, it's really hard to put them all back up again. You can try... you can try really hard... but the fences and walls are never the same as they were."

Her father looked at her for a long moment, and then he looked away. "Let's get some food. I'm sure you must be hungry."

What he meant was, 'Let's go inside where there are other people so that you'll stop talking about this, because you know better than to cause a scene. I taught you better than that.' 

She wasn't hungry. When she got angry or upset, her appetite was the first thing to go. Stress killed her desire to eat, deadened her taste buds, and feeding herself became a chore that she had to undertake to keep her body fueled, nothing more. She didn't understand people who turned to food when they were upset; emotional eating would never be a problem for her. 

But there was only so far that she could push before he would snap, and until she had the keys to her car in her hand, she couldn't afford to get to that point. So she unbuckled her seatbelt and got out of the car, following him into the restaurant and sitting opposite him in the booth that they were shown to.

They were quiet as they studied their menus, not talking about what they would order, what looked good. They just waited for their waiter to come and relayed their orders. It was only when they no longer had anything to hide behind that it sunk in that they were now stuck staring at each other for probably at least ten minutes while their food was made, and it would be awkward to do so in silence.

"What classes are you taking this summer?" her father asked. "I assume that you're behind where you should be."

"Credits-wise, no, I'm not," Lexa said. "But there are some classes that I took that don't fill the prereqs for pre-law, so I have to take more classes to fill them. Unfortunately, the ones that I need aren't offered during the summer session, so I'm not taking anything."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm not taking any classes this summer," Lexa repeated. "I'm helping at the dojang, and I found a non-profit that was looking for summer interns, so I'll be keeping myself busy. Hence the need for a car; it's too much to ask people to drive me around to wherever I need to go, especially when half the time I'm going to need to multiple places in the same day."

"If you're not taking anything this summer, how are you going to fit everything in?" he asked. "You'll have to take extra classes during the semester to make things up."

"I could do that," Lexa said. "But I'm not going to."

His eyebrows shot up. "What do you mean, you're not going to? How do you plan to graduate on time if you don't put in the effort to make up on what you missed?"

"I just won't graduate on time," Lexa said. "It's not the end of the world. I'm not the first person who won't graduate from college in the standard four years, and I won't be the last. I would rather carry a normal course load and have the time to really do things well than overload myself and risk compromising the quality of my work, not to mention the quality of my life."

His eyes narrowed. "Your life is school right now," he said. "That's what you're here for."

"No one's life is just one thing," Lexa said. "At least it shouldn't be."

"Is this about that girl?" he asked. 

Lexa tensed, her jaw clenching. "She isn't 'that girl'," she said. "She had a name."

Her father actually seemed to relax at that. "Had? It's over, then?"

"Of course it's over," Lexa snapped. "She's _dead_." The words came out too loud, drawing the attention of people nearby, and she glared at them until they turned their attention back to their own food, or water glasses, or anything but her.

"Not Costia," her father said. "Clarke."

It was like fireworks went off in her head, and it was all she could do not to stand up and scream at him, get right in his face and yell until her throat was raw, or maybe just put her fist through his face. She took a deep breath, let it out, her jaw shifting from side to side as she ground her teeth. "No," she said. "It's not over. This isn't about her. It's about _me_ and what I need to do to be happy."

"Your generation thinks everything is about happiness," he said. "That's not how life works. You're not always going to be happy."

"Trust me, I am _very_ aware of that," Lexa snarled. "I have spent most of my life living with a spectacular example of that fact. But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't _want_ to be happy, that I shouldn't do things that _make_ me happy, that I shouldn't surround myself with people who make me happy. It doesn't mean that I should spend my life miserable and alone just because things won't always be perfect. And furthermore, _my_ generation is inheriting a world that has been so fucked up by yours, and your parents', that we're all basically convinced that there's no winning, there's no getting ahead... and yet somehow we keep trying anyway. Somehow, we remain convinced that if we just try hard enough, we can actually make a difference, make changes to this shit show that we're being handed. But what would you know about that? You don't even know _me_ , must less my peers. So don't act like you know anything about it."

Her father was quiet for a moment, and she wondered if that would actually be the end of it. If maybe he would realize that nothing he said was going to change the decisions that she had already made. But of course she wasn't that lucky. "I just don't want you to make the same mistakes again," he said. "I don't want you to invest yourself in this relationship only to—"

"Mistake?" Lexa could feel the heat rising in her face, flooding through her limbs, and her fingers curled into fists in her lap. "Costia was not a _mistake_. Clarke is _not_ a mistake. She's..." She pressed her lips together until they formed a thin white line across her face. "She's the biggest reason I was finally able to move on from Costia's death. When I'm with her, I don't feel... broken. Shattered. With her I am better than I am alone. She makes me stronger. She makes me want to be the person that she thinks I am."

The words came out raw, the emotion behind them bleeding through despite her best efforts to keep it in check. She knew that her father couldn't be appealed to on the emotional level, because he had shut down that part of himself a long time ago. He didn't have a heart, only cold, calculated logic. And it _wasn't_ logical, her feelings for Clarke. She didn't think love ever was. It wasn't rational, it couldn't be measured or quantified. She couldn't lay out a list of facts, had no evidence to set before him as proof. 

"You need to focus on school," he said. "You need to think about your future."

"I _am_ thinking about my future," Lexa said. "I've already decided that I would rather take a little longer to finish and make sure that I'm able to do my best work than to just scrape by because I've taken on too much. My life is going to be more than just my career. I'm not you. I refuse to be like you."

He shook his head, but whatever he was going to say remained unsaid, because their food arrived. Lexa stared down at her plate, then began to carefully cut her chicken into smaller and smaller pieces without a single bite making it to her mouth. 

"I'm not going to let you throw away—"

"I'm not throwing anything away," she said. "But go ahead. Make your threat, deliver your ultimatum. I'm done with trying to be who you want me to be. I have to be myself, and maybe that's still a work in progress, but I'm okay with that. I wish that you could be, too, but I know that you can't. So tell me, what it is it that I have to do to earn your approval?"

He looked at her for a long time, eyes fixed on hers, and she refused to let her gaze waver, refused to look away because he would take that as submission, and she was done. 

And then it happened. For the first time in her life, it was her father who looked away first. "Eat your dinner before it gets cold," he said. 

"I'm not hungry," she said. 

He looked at her again, this time only a glance, probably to check if she was serious, and then he held up his hand to signal the waiter to bring the check.


	119. Clarke

Clarke looked down at her phone, opened to the Messages app, and her conversation with Lexa. The last thing she'd said to her that morning (and they'd slept apart last night, _why_ had they slept apart last night?) was 'Good luck'. Lexa hadn't responded. 

Now it was hours later, and Clarke had been trying all day to do some art, because one of her goals for the summer, since she wasn't taking classes, was to get back into sketching every day, and maybe doing some painting as well. She hoped that if she could make it a habit, she would be able to keep it up even during the school year, and it would help provide some balance for her. 

So far, she has a lot of half-finished (or maybe half-started was more accurate...) sketches and a growing sense of unease. Why hadn't Lexa called, or texted, or anything? How long did it take to buy a car? Surely somewhere along the line she'd had something snarky to say about something that she would have shared with Clarke... right? 

Maybe it was a good sign that she hadn't reached out. She wanted to believe that no news was good news, but from what she'd seen with Lexa and her father, she wasn't sure that that was actually the case. Not that she thought anything truly bad would happen... but parents had a way of being able to get under a person's skin like no one else could, and the last thing Lexa needed was something to tip the fragile balance she'd found. 

She tapped on the screen to bring it up again, and noticed that it was later than she'd thought, and she'd never eaten dinner. There was food in the house, but she didn't really feel like making anything. She'd been inside all day anyway. Getting out would do her good... and distract her from obsessing over what was going on with Lexa. 

She got in the car and drove to Whole Foods, because they had a big section of prepared foods that she could at least pretend were healthy (and maybe some of them actually were, if she didn't head straight to the pizza counter). Outside the door, there was a table covered in little potted plants, but not flowers or the things you would expect to see. These pots held cactuses, and other thick-leaved, waxy-looking plants. Succulents, the sign said. They were kind of cool-looking, all different shapes and colors. There were a few larger, shallow pots that contained several different plants, making a little garden in the rock-covered soil. But what would she do with it?

She went inside, wandering through the produce section and looking over the flowers, wondering what kind might be Lexa's favorite. It seemed like after spending the day with her father, she might appreciate some flowers, a little gesture to show how much Clarke cared. She picked out a bouquet... and then put it back again, and went back outside to get the little succulent garden. She picked out some sushi and headed for the checkout, then sat down at one of the little tables to eat. 

No sooner had she sat down, though, when her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen and saw it was Lexa. Just two words: I'm home.

She tapped on it to answer, quickly typing back, 'I'll be right there.'

Not that Lexa had asked her to come over, or given any real indication of distress, and maybe it was forward, or pushy, or something of her to assume that Lexa would want her to come over, but if that was the case, Lexa could always tell her not to. But when no message came back, she decided that must mean it was all right. She put her sushi back in the bag and got back in her car, driving over to the condo and parking.

Lexa had given her keys at the beginning of the summer. She didn't know what kind of conversation had gone into that decision, but she had to imagine that she had had to run it by Anya first. Still, it had seemed rude to ask, and she'd been pretty much struck dumb by it in the first place. She'd just stared down at the key in her hand, then at Lexa, then back at the key. 

"It's just easier," Lexa had said. "That way if you're coming over after work or something and you happen to get here before I do, you won't be stuck sitting out in your car waiting. Or if I need to leave before you, you'll be able to lock up after."

It was close to, but not quite, as if Lexa was asking her to move in. Clarke liked the fact that it allowed her to just go up to the condo now, without having to wait for Lexa to buzz her in. She slid off her shoes at the door, lining them up neatly, then used the second key to let herself in. 

"Hey," she said, setting down the bag gently on the coffee table and coming over to the end where Lexa was curled up, already in pajamas pants and a t-shirt like she had no intention of going anywhere or doing anything for the rest of the night. She held out her hands and Lexa took them, and they stayed like that for a moment like they were both waiting for the other to give some indication of which way this was going to go, whether Clarke was pulling her up or Lexa was pulling her down. In the end it was Lexa who moved, putting her feet on the floor so that Clarke could pull her into her arms. 

"Hey," she said again, her lips pressed against her cheek close back by her ear. "How was it?"

Lexa's arms just tightened around her. Clarke did the same, so that all of the space between them disappeared, and closed her eyes as she sank her fingers into Lexa's hair at the base of her neck. "I brought you something," she said when Lexa's grip finally loosened again. 

Lexa didn't seem inclined to actually let go, but Clarke managed to extricate herself from the embrace just enough to reach into the bag, pulling out the pot and its strange little plants. "I was going to get you flowers, but... I thought these suited you better. Flowers are ephemeral. These will last pretty much forever as long as you don't water them too much. At least that's what the tag says."

Lexa's hands shook as she took the pot from Clarke, and she just stared for a minute, blinking. "They're perfect," she said. "I love them."

Clarke smiled, and tipped her face up so that Lexa could kiss her, before she started trying to figure out where she could put the pot where it would get plenty of bright, indirect sunlight (which was also on the tag). She finally decided that the living room window sill was probably the best place, and she put them right in the middle, turning the pot until she decided on the angle that she liked best. 

"Thank you," she repeated when she came back to Clarke. "You didn't have to do that."

"I know," Clarke said. "But I thought you might need a little boost after dealing with your dad all day."

Lexa nodded. "It could have been worse," she said. "But it definitely could have been better."

"Do you want to talk about it?" Clarke asked. 

"I don’t know," Lexa said. "It's not like talking about it is going to change anything." 

"Did you at least find a car?"

"Yes. We at least managed that," Lexa said. She sank back down on the couch and held out her arms, so Clarke sat beside her and let herself be cuddled against her chest, which seemed backwards, because Lexa was the one who had had a rough day, not her, and shouldn't she be the one offering comfort? But maybe this fell along the lines of a child seeking out a familiar comfort object to cuddle when they needed to soothe themselves. If Lexa needed a teddy bear, she didn't mind being one. "How was your day?" she asked. 

"Uneventful," Clarke said. "Slept in, made breakfast, did some tidying and then tried to do some art. Just sketching, mostly, and nothing I liked enough to really focus on turning it into a more detailed piece. But some days are like that."

"Even in Australia," Lexa said, and Clarke could hear the smile in her voice even though she couldn't see her face without craning her neck. "What were you drawing? Or sketching? Is there a difference?"

"Not really," Clarke said. "But I guess if I had to define one versus the other in terms of how I use them, sketching is when you're doing something that's fast and loose and lacking in detail, and drawing is when you go in and really start to define that thing. You can draw without sketching, too, but usually you start to rough in the shapes of things, and get increasingly detailed from there."

"Like editing a photo, sort of," Lexa said. "Although when you take a picture, what's there is what you've got to work with. You can change the coloring, the contrast, those kinds of things, but you can't make it more or less detailed. And if it's blurry, there's not much you can do to sharpen it."

"What? But all of the crime shows just zoom in on grainy footage and get perfectly clear pictures!" Clarke protested. She felt Lexa's chest move with near-silent laughter. 

"You can't believe everything you see on TV," Lexa said. "If you read it on the internet, though... then you know it's true."

Clarke grinned and turned her head to press a kiss to her neck. "I'll keep that in mind next time I'm writing a paper. And if I'm questioned about the veracity of my source materials, I'll just put in the citation 'Because Lexa Says So'."

"Sounds legit," Lexa said. She shifted slightly, bringing her other leg up so that they were more sprawled than sitting on the couch, and more of Clarke's weight was against her than not. "Do you need to go home tonight?"

"Yes," Clarke said. "But I don't have to stay there. I just need to get clothes for tomorrow." 

"You don't have anything here?" Lexa asked. 

Clarke thought about it. "I might," she admitted. "I feel like I've left stuff here, unless I just lost it, but since I'm not in the dorms anymore that seems less likely, so maybe you just grabbed it and tossed it in with your own laundry."

"I know there's at least a shirt, but I'm not sure there's a whole outfit."

"I only really need clean socks and underwear," Clarke said. "Everything else can be worn again. Although sometimes people notice if you wear the same shirt two days in a row." Not that she cared, and not that she'd actually seen anyone today, except Octavia over breakfast, and she hadn't even been dressed at that point, so Octavia wouldn't even know the difference. Anyway, if anyone would understand, it would be Octavia, who had done the so-called walk of shame many mornings last semester, and never showed a single ounce of actual shame about it (and she shouldn't have to, either). "But if I have to go home, I'll still come back. You can even come with me."

"I'm not leaving the house again," Lexa said. "I don't want to move. I don't want you to move. I just want to stay right here and not think."

Clarke took one of her hands and laced her fingers through. "How's that working out for you?" she asked. "The not thinking?"

"Terribly," Lexa said. "I just... we were doing okay, but then after the paperwork for the car was signed, we went to get food, and suddenly we were fighting."

"About what?"

"School, mostly," Lexa said. "I told him that I wasn't taking any summer classes, because nothing that I actually need is offered, and he wasn't happy about it. I tried to explain that it wasn't actually a crime to not finish undergrad in four years, but he really didn't want to hear it. I get that it's an added financial burden for him, but if it comes down to it, I'll take on the loans myself. I'll do what I have to do. I thought that he would be swayed by the argument that I would rather do really well on a normal course load than risk doing mediocre work by overloading myself, but he wasn't impressed by that logic. As far as he's concerned, I should be focused solely on school, and everything else should be secondary." Clarke felt her shake her head. "Not even secondary. Non-existent. The dojang, internships or volunteer work..." Her fingers tightened around Clarke's. "You."

Clarke sighed and brought Lexa's knuckles to her lips. "I'm sorry," she said. "It's your life, though, and you need to do what's best for you."

"He doesn't believe that _this_ is what's best for me."

"This as in what you're doing now, or this as in us?" Clarke asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer. 

Lexa held her closer, her cheek resting against Clarke's hair. "Both," she said. "At least it sounded that way. I didn't even say anything about you, but then he asked, 'Is this about that girl?' I thought he was talking about Costia, because earlier we'd been talking about the impact that her death had had on my grades – specifically that I had slipped from my perfect 4.0 average while I was in Australia – but no, he was talking about you."

Clarke shifted around so that she could see Lexa's face; she wanted to know what was going on with her, wanted to be able to see with her own eyes the impact that all of this was having, assuming that she wasn't trying to keep it hidden. "What does he think...?" She didn't even really know how to finish the question.

"That you're a distraction," she said. "That being with Costia was a mistake, and getting attached to her jeopardized my future because when she died I didn't just brush it off and keep moving. I assume he's thinking that if something happens to you, or between you and me, that it will be the same thing all over again. But nothing's going to happen to you. I won't let it."

The words were fierce, and Clarke was sure that Lexa meant them. She was equally sure that there was no possible way for Lexa to protect her from every possible threat... and that there was also no way to guarantee that what they had now would last. Not that she didn't want it to. She did. But things happened and people changed, and...

She swallowed. "I'm not planning on going anywhere," she said softly. 

"I know," Lexa said. "Neither am I. And you're not a distraction, or a mistake. He's got it all wrong. He wants me to be him, to be empty and emotionless, and I can't. I won't. I don't want to be."

"Then don't be," Clarke said. "He can't force you to..." She stopped, because she realized that saying that he couldn't force her to do anything might not actually be true. If her father was paying for school, or helping, that was a whole lot of leverage. "I'm sorry that he's being like that. I'm sorry that... that every time you see him things seem to get worse as often as they get better."

"More often," Lexa said. "This is..." She took a deep breath, and Clarke's body rose with it, then settled again as she exhaled. "I didn't tell him, and I never will tell him, that you _are_ part of the reason that I decided to do things the way that I did."

Clarke looked at her, trying not to frown. "What do you mean?"

"I want to have time for you, and for us. That's part of it. But beyond that... if I push through, and I graduate on time, then I finish a year before you do. Which would mean I would be going to law school while you're still here, or taking a year off, which I know won't really be an option."

Clarke's stomach knotted as she realized where this was most likely going. She wanted to cover Lexa's mouth, to keep her from saying the words, to keep them from being true, because she wasn't ready to have this amount of responsibility over another person and their future. Nothing was forever. Lexa had gotten a tattoo to symbolize that. How could she be making decisions now assuming that in three years, or two years until Lexa was supposed to graduate, they would still be together? 

But then they'd had conversations about things that weren't likely to be relevant until much farther down the line than that. As much as it didn't seem that way on a day-to-day basis, two years wasn't actually that long in the grand scheme of things, and it would likely pass much more quickly than she could imagine right now.

"Lexa," she said softly. 

"Listen to me," Lexa said. "Hear me out. Please." Clarke nodded. "All of the reasons that I already gave, everything I told him, is absolutely true, and I think valid reasons for extending how long it takes for me to graduate. I tried to get him to let me take a semester off and he refused. The end result is essentially the same. If I take a normal course load, I'll either graduate a semester before you, or at the same time as you. Which means – if we're still... us... at the time – that I'll be looking at law school and you'll be looking at medical school at the same time. Which means we can try to find programs that work for us, if not in the same school, at least in the same city, or the same area. It might not be possible, and if it's not, then we'll deal with that. We'll figure it out. People do it. They make it work. But I'd rather give us the chance to not have to."

Clarke closed her eyes as she felt them sting, and her fingers dug into Lexa's side. Maybe she shouldn't let her do this; maybe she should push her to graduate on time and make her decisions based on herself alone. But that wasn't how love, or relationships, or even humanity worked. If this was what she felt was right for her, if this was what she needed to do to keep herself sane, and hopefully happy, then who was Clarke to tell her no?

She tried not to let herself feel the pang of guilt at the realization that she didn't even really want to.


	120. Lexa

"There's still time to back out," Lexa told Clarke. "You don't have to do this if you don't want to."

"I want to," Clarke said. "It's your birthday, and this is what you want to do for your birthday. I'm not going to say, 'No, I'm not going, because I might end up being slightly uncomfortable.' What kind of friend would I be if I did that? What kind of girlfriend?"

"One who knows her limits," Lexa said. She didn't want Clarke to change her mind. She wanted her to come, and to have a good time. She wanted this to be something that they could share. But she also wanted to give Clarke every opportunity to bow out gracefully. What that would mean for the trip overall, she wasn't sure, because going and spending two nights on her own, and three days where her potential enjoyment of everything she did would be tainted by the fact that she didn't have Clarke there to share it with wasn't exactly her idea of a good time. Anya was excited about going, as were Lincoln and Octavia. Raven... she wasn't sure how she was feeling about it, but when Anya had suggested that she not be left out, Lexa had agreed. 

"But I don't," Clarke said. "The last time I went camping was when I was ten years old, with the Girl Scouts, and the weather was miserable and I was surrounded by girls who were either scared out of their minds because it was the first time they'd ever really been away from home in any kind of significant way, or who were complaining about the dirt and the bugs, or who didn't want to share a tent with this person or that person, because honestly, girls – kids in general – at that age are the worst. So I don't know if I really don't like camping, or if I just don't like camping under those circumstances. The weather is supposed to be gorgeous all weekend, most of you are really into the outdoorsy thing so you won't be complaining, and I know that you're not going to complain about sharing a tent with me, so I'm willing to give it a second chance."

"Okay," Lexa said. She looked over the supplies gathered and piled near the door, to be loaded into Lincoln's truck first thing tomorrow morning. She and Anya had made a checklist, and they'd double-checked everything. There was nothing more that they could do to prepare. "It's not like we're just going out to the middle of nowhere, either. It's a campsite, so there will be other people in the vicinity, and there are bathrooms and showers and everything."

"I appreciate that," Clarke said. 

"I'm not particularly keen on digging holes to bury my shit either," Lexa said. "I've done it – yay survival camp – but I'm not above holding on to a few creature comforts. Although emphasis on the creature, because for some reason campground showers seem to attract bugs. Spiders in particular."

It was probably cruel, but she brushed her fingers against the back of Clarke's neck as she said it, and couldn't help laughing when Clarke yelped, then glared. "You're lucky it's your birthday," she said. 

"I'm sorry," Lexa said, her eyes downcast. "I couldn't help myself."

"I ought to make you pay for it," Clarke said. 

"Am I going to have to watch my back all weekend, then?" Lexa asked. 

"No," Clarke said. "I'm not very good at the whole 'revenge is a dish best served cold' thing."

"Then...?" Lexa raised an eyebrow. 

"I have other ways of making you beg for mercy," Clarke said.

"Is that a threat, or a promise?"

* * *

The next morning, Lincoln arrived with Octavia a little after eight. The drive to the campground wasn't that long, but they wanted to get there early enough to set up camp without having to worry about daylight, and without it using up the entire day. They loaded the supplies (which seemed like more than they would need for three days, but it was always better to be safe than sorry) into the back of the truck, and as they were finishing Raven pulled up. 

"Sorry I'm late," she said. "Rough morning."

Lexa saw Clarke's eyes immediately flick down to Raven's leg in its brace, and Raven must have noticed as well because she shook her head. "Not that," she said. "I thought I'd set my alarm, but apparently I'd accidentally set it for PM, not AM. Luckily I hadn't switched off all of my other alarms, so one of them still went off, just later than I would have liked. Then my car decided that it would be fun to not start, which took a little bit to sort out, and I'm going to have to work on it more when we get back, but at least I got here."

"You should have texted me," Anya said. "I would have come and picked you up."

Raven looked at her for a second, then laughed. "That didn't even occur to me," she said. "I guess I've gotten too used to having to do everything for myself."

"I'm glad that you got here, anyway," Anya said. "Do you want to keep your bag with you, or put it in the truck with everything else?"

"There's nothing in there I'll need during the drive," Raven said, and pitched it into the back of the truck, where Lincoln shifted things around to make sure that it stayed put. He had a cover for the back so that nothing would go flying out, but it was still better to minimize the amount of shifting around that happened.

"Who's driving?" Lexa asked, realizing that they'd never actually figured that out. "Lincoln, obviously, but the rest of us?" Because they had six people and five vehicles. 

"I am," Anya said. "I hate being a passenger, remember?"

"I thought that was only in your own car," Lexa said. 

"No, it's in all cars. I'll put up with it if I have to, but if given the choice, I would rather be the one in control." She grinned. "It also means that I get to pick the music."

"We're not listening to Hamilton the whole way there," Lexa said. 

"Why not?" Anya asked. "It's pretty much exactly the right length! You're just mad because you can't rap well enough to do some of the Marquis de Lafayette's bits."

"Oh, this I have to hear," Raven said. 

"No fair," Octavia said. "I'm going to miss it."

Lexa's felt blood rush to her cheeks, and she wished she'd never brought it up. It wasn't as if she minded listening to Anya's (and America's) latest musical obsession, but if she'd kept her mouth shut, she could have just sat in the back and listened. Now it was like Anya had thrown down a gauntlet. (But she really was pretty sure that it was physically impossible for the average person to spit out all of the words in the 'guns and ships' bit.)

"You don't _have_ to ride with me," Lincoln said, "but I don't think it will be very comfortable having all five of you in one car. And I might pout over being abandoned." He stuck out his lower lip a little to demonstrate.

Octavia rolled her eyes and pushed up on her toes to kiss it back into place. "I won't abandon you," she said. She leaned toward Clarke and said in a stage whisper, "I want video."

"And I want to have a place to sleep tonight," Clarke said, "so no."

"I got you," Raven said. 

"I can hear all of you," Lexa said. "And it's not happening."

"As if you can resist," Anya said. 

"Watch me."

But in the end, she chose to risk the embarrassment, because really, it was almost impossible to resist, even though some songs she was only able to get out maybe one word in ten. And yes, Raven got some of it on video, but she didn't care. She just flipped her off and kept singing, because damn it, it was her birthday, and she was going to have a good time.

They arrived at the campground just as the second disc was finishing, just as Anya had predicted. They went to check in, and discovered that apparently there had been a small snafu with their reservation, and although they had one, it wasn't in a site that they would be able to drive up to like they'd expected. "This makes things... interesting..." Anya said. "I don't think the hike is bad, but we're going to have to figure out how to divide things up so that we can hopefully get everything up in one trip."

It took a while, because they had a cooler which would have to be carried by two people, and they had to be careful about weight distribution, especially for the less experienced hikers... and the less agile. Lexa watched as Anya and Raven tried to out-stubborn each other on how much Raven would be able to carry.

"I don't doubt that you're strong enough," Anya said. "I'm worried about what it's going to do to your center of gravity, which is already compromised."

"I'll be fine," Raven said. "I'm not a fucking cripple."

Lexa stepped up, because the last thing she wanted was for this trip to start with people pissed off at each other. "Have you been hiking since the accident?" she asked.

"No," Raven said, "but—"

"Then you don't know how it's going to affect you," Lexa said. "Clarke's carrying a lighter pack than I am, because she has less experience than I do. She doesn't know how to compensate for the weight in the same way that I do. Neither do you. So just take what you're being given, and prove us all wrong."

Raven looked at her for a long moment, and then nodded once, sharply. "Fine. But I _am_ going to prove you wrong." She picked up the bag and slung it over her back, fastening the straps around the waist and across the chest and adjusting them so that everything was in the proper place, and the weight of it would be more on her hips and less on her shoulders. Either she'd done this before or she'd been paying attention. 

"I'm not sure that that was the best idea," Anya said quietly. "Now she might push herself too hard just to prove herself."

"She might," Lexa said. "But then that would actually prove the opposite, because it would show that we were right, and she doesn't know her own limits."

"I'm not sure she'll see it that way," Anya said. 

"It stopped the argument," Lexa said. "What would you have had me do?"

"I was handling it."

"You were arguing while the rest of us stood around waiting. We're not arguing anymore. Let's go."

She saw Anya's jaw twitch, but she nodded. So much for not starting the trip with people pissed at each other.

Luckily, the trail to their campsite wasn't terribly steep, and for the most part they were able to just walk, albeit with their weight tipped a little forward to offset the slope and the weight dragging at their backs. They took turns walking next to Lincoln and carrying one side of the cooler, but of course he refused to switch out. Lexa didn't try to argue with him about it, though, because when he told her that he was okay, he looked her straight in the eyes and made her believe it. "I couldn't carry it on my own," he said. "But there's not much farther, I don't think, and I can carry half of it the whole way."

Just as they thought they were in the clear, though, they found one rocky incline that was just tall and steep enough that they were forced to stop and figure out how to navigate it. Lincoln climbed up first, then Anya, and the rest of them handed up the cooler. Octavia was able to find a path up herself, and Lexa went last, making sure that both Clarke and Raven got up safely. She was glad when Raven took Anya's outstretched hand, and didn't complain when Lexa put her own hand on the back of her pack as they levered her up the last few steps. Clarke was hauled the last little bit by Lincoln and Octavia, and then Lexa scrambled up after, accepting a hand when it was offered because she wasn't too proud, and anyway she wanted to show Raven that everyone needed help sometimes.

They finally made it to the campsite, and they all decided pretty quickly that the view made it worth the fact that they hadn't been able to just drive the truck up. They got the tents up first, spread as far away from each other as they could get within the confines of their allotted space so that they all had a little bit of breathing room, and then located the nearest restroom, which was only a couple of sites down. 

"Who's hungry?" Anya asked. "We've got plenty of stuff for sandwiches for lunch."

Lexa had never actually counted the number of slices of bread in a loaf, but she was surprised when there was only a few left by the time they were done eating, and suddenly Anya wanted to bring as much as she had didn't seem so crazy after all. 

"I'll cook for dinner," Anya said. "But this was faster."

Once they'd eaten, the sun was high in the sky, and even with the altitude cooling off the air, they were sweating. 

"Isn't there supposed to be a lake?" Octavia asked. "Because I could really use some cooling off right now."

"There is," Lexa said, pulling the map they'd been given out of her pocket. "It's... well, not that close. But not that far, either."

"I'm going to change," Octavia announced, and ducked into her tent. 

"So I guess that's the plan?" Clarke said, looking at Lexa. "Unless..."

"It sounds good to me," Lexa said, and there were general sounds of agreement, so they all went to change into bathing suits, pulling clothes back on over them. They packed a couple of bags with all of their towels and headed down the slope, glad that the path to the beach did not take them over that random rocky bit again. 

As soon as they were in sight of the water, Octavia kicked off her boots and stripped down, making a beeline for it, Lincoln close on her heels. Lexa held back until they'd staked out a place on the small beach, which wasn't exactly crowded but it wasn't unoccupied, either. She untied her boots and took them off, tucking her socks carefully inside, and then folded her shorts and t-shirt and tucked them into one of the bags, because the last thing she wanted was to have to put them back on covered in sand later. 

"Holy shit," she heard Raven say, and when she turned to look, she saw that she was staring at her back, and the ink that ran down the length of her spine. "That's awesome."

"Thank you," Lexa said. She was glad when Raven didn't ask any questions about it, and wondered if maybe somehow Anya had signaled her that she shouldn't. She looked over at Clarke, then at the rest of the people on the beach, and after a second's hesitation, held out her hand.


	121. Clarke

Clarke felt Lexa's fingers curl around hers, but she hadn't missed the way that she'd glanced around first, and it was a little unsettling every time she realized that she couldn't just _do_ things anymore, when it came to public displays of affection, however mild. She – they – couldn't just _be_. Everything was a statement, and a potential source of conflict. And it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that they had to worry about what complete strangers might do or say about them. 

No one had the right to make anyone else feel afraid.

They walked down to the water's edge and waded in. It was colder than Clarke had expected, and she felt goose bumps race across her skin.

"Just dive in!" Octavia said. "Don't be a wimp!"

Clarke looked at Lexa and rolled her eyes. "I'm okay with being a wimp if you are," she said. 

"It isn't actually any easier to do it slowly," Lexa said. "Your body doesn't actually 'get used to it'." She made a little air quotes gesture with her free hand. 

"Is that a fact?" Clarke asked. "Because I'd love to see the science behind it."

"Who needs science when you have me?" Lexa asked, her eyes sparkling in the sunlight, a smile teasing at the corners of her mouth, and god, Clarke wanted to kiss her, there in front of anyone who cared to look, because she was beautiful and she was happy and it was her birthday and...

And then she found herself being shoved into the water, faceplanting into the gentle waves, and she heard Octavia laughing, and then a yelp and a splash, and when she pushed her hair out of her eyes she saw Lexa bob to the surface looking ready to kill. Lincoln held up his hands and pointed at Octavia, like, 'Hey, don't blame me, she made me do it.'

Lexa's eyes narrowed, and then she dove past Clarke to get at Octavia, and Clarke suddenly found herself in the middle of a water fight that didn't actually seem to have sides. By the time it subsided, she realized that the water didn't feel so cold anymore, so maybe there was something to this whole plunging in thing.

"Where's...?" she started to ask, and then looked toward the shore, where Anya and Raven were just getting to the water, Anya's arm around Raven's back to steady her because _obviously_ she couldn't wear her brace into the water, and she hadn't brought a crutch or anything with her. Clarke felt like an asshole for forgetting that just running down the beach wasn't something that Raven could do, and they'd all just abandoned her to figure it out on her own.

All of them except Anya, apparently. She watched as Raven finally let go of her and dove in, swimming out to where the rest of them were and coming up from under the water grinning. "The one part of PT I actually liked," she said, bouncing a little. "By the way, Lexa, nice form there."

Lexa's face twisted into a scowl. "Oh, I'm sure you would manage a perfect dive if you were grabbed from behind and _thrown_ into the water," she said. 

"I'm sure I would," Raven said. "Want to test that theory?"

"You know it's coming," Lexa said. "That gives you an unfair advantage."

"Excuses, excuses," Raven said. "Number one, the challenge: demand satisfaction. If they apologize, no need for further action."

"Number two," Lexa said, "If they don't, grab a friend, that's your second. Your lieutenant when there's reckoning to be reckoned." 

"What the...?" Octavia asked, cocking her head in Clarke's direction.

"I believe we are about to witness some sort of swan dive rap battle or something," Clarke said.

"Oh shit." Octavia laughed. "Wait, did she? Is there video? I forgot to ask if there was video."

"You'll have to ask Raven," Clarke said. 

But Raven was busy being lifted by Lincoln, somehow managing to keep her balance as he lifted her almost completely out of the water, his hands cupping her feet at the level of his chest. "Look 'em in the eye, aim no higher. Summon all the courage you require."

"Count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Number ten, paces, fire!" Anya finished for her as Lincoln pushed her up, and although the dive wasn't perfect, it was pretty good, long and shallow to account for the depth of the water that they were in, and then she swam back. 

"I give it an eight and a half," Octavia said. She looked at Lexa. "Your turn."

"I never—"

"They won't shut up if you don't do it," Clarke said. "You know they won't."

"Why don't _you_ do it?" Lexa said. "If you're so keen?"

"Because if I do anything that involves defying gravity – don't start, Octavia – in this," she gestured to her bikini top, "I will end up sharing things with everyone on this beach that I'm pretty sure you would prefer that I just shared with you."

"Gross," Octavia said, but she was grinning. "But she's right," she added. "I won't shut up until you do it." 

Lexa looked at Octavia, then at Clarke and Raven (who was looking more than a little smug) and finally she rolled her eyes and sighed. "Fine," she said. She let herself be picked up, balancing on Lincoln's hands just like Raven had, and when he threw her, her body arched up and then down again, everything perfectly in line, and when she surfaced Octavia held up both her hands, fingers outspread. "That was definitely a ten," she said. 

"Traitor," Raven said. 

"Sorry," Octavia said. "I call 'em like I see 'em." 

"You probably weren't even looking," Raven groused. "You were probably admiring your boyfriend's muscles."

Octavia stuck her tongue out and splashed her, and Clarke bobbed back a little ways to avoid being caught in the crossfire again. She held her arm out to Lexa as she swam back, slipping it around her and feeling Lexa's skin glide against her own. She smiled. "I think you're always a ten," she told her.

Lexa snorted. "You have to say that. You're sharing a tent with me."

"I don't _have to_ do anything," Clarke said. 

Lexa's lips pursed, but if she'd been thinking of saying anything, the must have decided against it. They all stayed in the water for a while longer, until they were starting to shiver and turn pruney. This time they all kept Raven's pace as they made their way back to the spot they'd staked out and sprawled on towels to let the sun warm and dry them before heading back to camp.

Anya had brought a lot of semi-prepared food with them, things that she'd started at home that allowed her to assemble a meal better than pretty much all of the food in the campus dining halls with a minimum of effort, although Raven stepped in to help her. She seemed to know what she was doing when it came to cooking over an open fire, though, and the end result was delicious. When they were done, Lincoln and Octavia offered do the cleanup, leaving Clarke and Lexa to just sit back and enjoy the warmth of the fire as the sun started to descend. 

"Before we get everything put away," Octavia said, "we did have one little surprise. Lexa, close your eyes. Clarke, make sure her eyes are closed." She went into a second, smaller cooler that Clarke hadn't noticed, and lifted the lid, pulling out a bakery box. She brought it over to the little picnic table that was on the site and then pulled out a small candle, sticking it into one of the cupcakes and lighting it. 

"Come on," Clarke said, taking Lexa's hands and gently guiding her toward the table. She was honestly shocked that Lexa actually kept her eyes closed the entire time, apparently trusting her to keep her safe even as they navigated around the fire. "Okay."

Lexa opened her eyes, and went wide when she saw what Lincoln and Octavia had brought. She stared at the flickering flame of the candle, and Clarke could see it reflecting off the dampness in her eyes as they sang happy birthday. She looked at Clarke, then closed her eyes and blew out the candle. 

"We tried to pick out something for everyone that we thought they'd like," Octavia said. "But feel free to trade, or share."

"Thank you," Lexa said, her voice husky with all of the emotion she was trying not to show. "All of you. Thank you." 

"You're welcome," Lincoln said. "Happy birthday."

"It is," Lexa said softly. "It is."

They stayed up for a while sitting around the campfire, but it had been a long day, and as the fire dwindled, everyone's energy seemed to flag, and soon they were retreating to their tent to get their toiletry kits for a trip to the bathhouse before bed. Once that was done, they zipped themselves into their little nylon hut and sat down on the air mattress next to each other. 

"You know... there's one big downside to this whole setup," Clarke said.

"What's that?" Lexa asked as she unbraided her hair. 

"Sleeping bags," Clarke said. "How the heck are you supposed to cuddle when you're in a sleeping bag?"

The corner of Lexa's mouth quirked. "Oh ye of little faith," she said. She took the two sleeping bags and unrolled them, then fully unzipped them both so that they were flat... and then proceeded to zip them together again as one big sleeping bag. "Bet you didn't learn _that_ in Girl Scout camp," she teased.

"I definitely didn't," Clarke said, and then reached out and slid one hand into the waves of Lexa's hair, cupping the back of her head as she drew her in and kissed her, long and soft and deep like she'd wanted to since the beach, her fingers tightening in the material of her shirt as Lexa's back arched, pressing their bodies together. 

"I love you," Clarke whispered, her lips pressed against Lexa's throat. "I love you..."

"I love you too," Lexa whispered back, sliding her hands under Clarke's shirt, lifting the hem to pull it off without actually breaking their kiss, which was both impossible and amusing in the attempt. Clothes came off slowly, but not too slowly, and then they retreated into the sleeping bags, kissing and touching until all of a sudden Lexa stopped. "Shit."

Clarke blinked, lips still pursed for the kiss that was no longer happening. "Huh?"

"Sheets."

"We're in a sleeping bag?" It came out as a question, and it kind of was, because didn't a sleeping bag basically act as its own sheet and blanket all in one? 

"Yes, which is not all that easily washable, and..." The light of their LED lantern that they hadn't bothered to switch off (like they'd been thinking about that...) lit the interior of the tent enough for Clarke to be able to see that Lexa was blushing. 

"Oh," Clarke said. "Um."

"Sheets," Lexa said. "You put them in the sleeping bag to... but I didn't."

"Shit," Clarke said, finally understanding but not sure what it meant.

"I have them," Lexa said. "I just..." She crawled out of the sleeping bag and Clarke watched her move, her skin tinted blue by the light reflecting off of nylon, beautiful even as she rifled through her bag, finally coming out brandishing a sheet triumphantly. "Except you have to move," she said. "But I promise it'll be worth it." 

It didn't take a genius to figure out what that meant, and Clarke moved, pressed close to Lexa as she unzipped the bags and spread out the sheet inside, then zipped them back up again and got back in. Clarke burrowed in after her. "Where were we?" she asked, but she didn't actually need the reminder, and neither did Lexa. 

"Shhh," Lexa whispered against her ear, her lips brushing against the lobe, and her tongue flicked out to tease it at the same time her hand, with those long, elegant fingers, _god_ those fingers... teased other places, places that made it very, very hard to obey the gentle command. "Do you want everyone else to hear?"

"You think they're not doing the same..." Clarke's eyelids fluttered and her back arched, and it took a moment to compose herself enough to speak again, "thing? Because O and Lincoln... _Fuck_." Her hips bucked as Lexa slid a finger into her, her thumb rolling over her clit, and the whole world seemed to pitch and roll.

"Really?" Lexa asked. "I never would have guessed. But Anya and Raven..."

"Are all the way across the campsite," Clarke groaned, managing to free the hand trapped between their bodies enough to grip Lexa's upper arm, and her hand stilled like she wasn't sure if Clarke was trying to stop her, but no, that wasn't it, she just had to anchor herself to something, had to... 

"It's not that big a site," Lexa whispered, and for a second her hand was gone, but then it came back, more, another finger, and Clarke looked at her, just looked up at her, at her beautiful face and bright eyes and teasing smirk, and she lifted her head to steal a kiss that was all too ready to be stolen, and it was good, it was so good, had anything ever compared to this? 

No, probably not, because no one had ever known her like this, she'd never _let_ them know her like this, and she forced her eyes open again (because they kept closing every time pleasure flared through her) and this was hers, this was really hers, _Lexa_ was hers, and she was Lexa's, and, and, and...

"Shh," Lexa whispered again, not to quiet her this time, but to soothe her, her hands gone still because she knew how sensitive Clarke was after she came, especially when she came that hard, knew that every nerve ending was lit up and reactive, and that any stimulation, even a light touch, could register as too much. "Shhhh..." 

Clarke took a deep breath and let it out slowly as her heartrate began to slow, her breathing to steady, and finally she was able to move again, shifting to twine herself around Lexa, finding her mouth and kissing her, her tongue tracing the curve of her lower lip, and she felt Lexa shiver, not from cold but from anticipation, or so she assumed because her skin was flushed, almost hot to the touch, and the lower she went the hotter she was, and her skin was like the earth's surface, giving way to a molten core, and she wished that the sleeping bags didn't restrict what she could comfortably do, but it was all right, she would make it work...

She kissed her, and kissed her again, and again, until it was too hard for Lexa to breathe and kiss at the same time, and she turned her face into the curve of Clarke's shoulder to stifle the sounds that she was making, because shhh, shhh, they didn't want anyone else to hear, even though Clarke was sure that they all knew what was happening. 

She clung afterward, and Clarke rubbed her back and stroked her hair, and when she felt dampness on her skin that wasn't just sweat, she nuzzled against Lexa's jaw until she tipped up her face, and then Clarke kissed away the tears, kissed her lips again and tasted salt but no sorrow, and they could say plenty without saying anything, couldn't they?

But there were words, words that seemed to rise out of nowhere, and they slipped from her tongue without thought. "'With my body, I thee worship...'"

And then she froze, because she realized that what she'd said was not just poetry, not Shakespeare or anything like it. What she'd said...

Lexa's eyes opened, just a crack and then wider. "Isn't that...?" 

"I'm sorry," Clarke said.

"Don't be."

"It's not...?"

"No."

A wave of relief swept through her, and she kissed her again. "Happy birthday, Lexa."

"Thank you, Clarke."

Clarke waited for her to roll over, waited for her to fit herself into the curve of Clarke's body like she did almost every night now. She laced their fingers together and kissed the back of her shoulder. "And many more."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who may not know, the line, 'With my body I thee worship' is part of the wedding vows from the Book of Common Prayer. Which is why Clarke had a minor heart attack when she realized what she'd said and where it came from.


	122. Lexa

Lexa sat in one of the canvas folding chairs they'd brought, running her fingers through Clarke's hair absently as Clarke leaned forward to hold the marshmallows she'd skewered over the fire. She was frowning with concentration like it was absolutely critical that she get them exactly right. Meanwhile, Lincoln seemed to think that the best way to toast a marshmallow was to stick it in the flame so that it caught fire, then blow it out. 

"Sure, it's a little burnt," he said, "but you barely taste that part, and it's a lot faster."

"I don't care about fast," Clarke said. "I care about _good_."

"Speaking of," Anya said, "what's the verdict?"

Clarke glanced up at her. "On?"

"Camping. Yay or nay?"

"I'm still here, aren't I?" Clarke asked. 

"Given the fact that you came in my car, not your own, you don't exactly have a choice about that," Anya pointed out. 

"I could have stolen your keys and drove off," Clarke said. "Found a hotel and came back to pick you up when it was over." 

Anya rolled her eyes. "Good luck with that," she said. "You think I would actually let you steal my keys?"

"Of course you wouldn't _let_ me," Clarke said. "If you _let_ me, it wouldn't be stealing, it would be borrowing. Anyway, I would just have to wait until you were distracted. It wouldn't be that hard."

"I'm never distracted," Anya said.

Clarke snorted, and then tried to cover it with a cough. Lexa nudged her with her knee gently, and Clarke looked back at her. Lexa raised her eyebrows and mouthed, 'Behave,' and hoped that it was subtle enough that no one else would notice it in the dim, flickering light of the fire. 

"I've never seen so many stars," Raven said, looking up. "It's... almost intimidating. Like when you realize how many stars there are, how many potential suns... it's really, really egocentric and naïve of us to believe that we're the only sentient life in the universe."

"That's true," Anya said. "But the odds are pretty good that wherever that other sentient life is, it's too far away for us to ever encounter it. At least not within our lifetimes, and probably not for several generations after that, if it ever happens at all. And a lot of those stars are so far away that they've already gone out, but we still see them because of how long it takes for light to travel."

"Wow, buzzkill," Octavia said. 

"Does it make something less beautiful because it's ephemeral?" Anya asked. "Not that millions of years, or whatever the lifespan of a star is, is ephemeral."

"And I'm back to feeling small," Raven said. 

"Maybe in the grand scheme of things," Anya said. "But that doesn't make you insignificant."

Lexa got ready to nudge Clarke again, but she didn't say anything. She was too focused on checking the marshmallows, which had apparently reached just the right level of golden brown and gooey. She reached for the package of graham crackers and pulled some out, handing them down to Clarke, along with squares from a Hershey bar, because even though it was crap chocolate, she was pretty sure that it was against some kind of cosmic rule to use anything else in a s'more.

Clarke assembled them carefully, and then handed one to Lexa before biting into her own, marshmallow goo running in strings down her chin as she pulled it away from her mouth. Her eyes rolled back, and she smiled up at Lexa, or the sky, or something. 

"Well at least we know she likes _some_ parts of camping," Raven said dryly. 

Clarke grinned. "I like camping," she said. "In the right company, anyway."

"By which you mean you like getting laid in the—" Octavia's remark was cut off by Lincoln's hand closing over her mouth, and then he kissed her in apology, but at least she didn't decide to finish it anyway. 

Not that Lexa would have cared, really, even though she was sure that that's why Lincoln had stopped her. Clarke probably would have just thrown something at her; she was used to Octavia and her commentary. But sometimes it felt like everyone, or at least Anya and Lincoln, tried to protect her from anything that might upset her. 

Right now, though, it didn't feel like there was much that could. A few days away from everything had left her more mellow than she could remember being in a very, very long time. (And getting laid in the woods, as she was sure Octavia had been planning to say, didn't hurt. Not that she was stupid enough to do it anywhere but in the tent. She'd seen enough episodes of Sex Sent Me to the ER to know how bad an idea that could be.)

"We should make this a tradition," Octavia said. "Maybe not always on Lexa's birthday, but... every summer at some point we should go camping."

"I'd like that," Lexa said, and everyone turned to look at her, not quite like they'd forgotten she was there, but like they'd forgotten she could speak or something. "On my birthday, or another time."

"You're different out here," Lincoln said. "More relaxed. Not that I'm saying you're uptight or—"

"I am," Raven chimed in. "But now that you've got the stick out of your ass..." She grinned, and Lexa forced a smile back, because she knew that it was meant as a joke, that it was just Raven being her usual snarky self, but the words hurt. Because it reminded her that when it came right down to it, people tended not to like her very much, and it was her own fault. 

Not that she cared about being liked by people in general – most of them were idiots, assholes, or both – but even the people that she did like to spend time with tended to give her a little bit of space, keeping her at arm's length not because it was what they wanted, necessarily, but because it was what they thought that she wanted. And it was, wasn't it? Or it had been. Now...

Clarke wrapped her arm around Lexa's calf and tipped her head back, resting it against her knee as she looked up at her. She didn't know what Clarke saw in her face, but whatever it was was enough to get her to reach up and take Lexa's hand, tugging on it until she leaned down to hear whatever Clarke had to say.

"Don't let them bother you," she whispered.

"I'm trying not to," Lexa said. "It's not their fault I am the way I am."

Clarke looked at her, and for a second Lexa thought she was going to say something more, but after a moment she looked away. "Do you want another s'more?" she asked. 

"Only if you're making one," Lexa said.

"I was thinking about it." Clarke squeezed her leg, and then got up to go find the bag of marshmallows to skewer several more. While she was doing that, Lexa got up to go find them sweatshirts, because even though their fronts were warm from the fire, the night air was chilly enough at this altitude that she wasn't inclined to leave their backs exposed. At least their site wasn't near any standing water, so they hadn't had too many problems with mosquitoes.

"Thank you," Clarke said, when she came back and held it out to her. It quickly became obvious, though, that she wasn't going to be able to put it on one-handed, and she also wasn't willing to put down the marshmallows, even for a minute, because in that minute they might be ruined. So Lexa helped her put it on, going so far as to zip it up for her like she was a little kid being bundled up to go out in the snow. 

Octavia made a gagging noise, and then grinned. "You two are so gross, you know that?"

"And you're not?" Clarke asked. "You're sitting in Lincoln's lap."

"He's warm!" Octavia said. "Isn't it scientifically proven that if you're cold you should cuddle with someone because it will help get you back to a normal temperature faster or something?"

"People think it's a good way to treat hypothermia, and I guess if you're desperate it's better than nothing, but no, I'm pretty sure science has actually proven that that's _not_ a good way to warm people up."

"What about babies, though?" Raven asked. "Isn't it good for preemies to have skin-to-skin contact with people?"

"Yes," Clarke said. "That's different, though. They're not just too cold. They're not meant to be out in the world at all, so I guess having skin contact with a parent, or any adult human, helps them somehow. I don't know all of the science of it."

"Wasn't your sister born early?" Anya asked. 

"Not that early," Clarke said. "About four weeks, which isn't ideal, but she was born basically all systems go – she got a little jaundice, but that happens with plenty of full-term babies, too – and big enough that they didn't even keep her in the hospital for an extra day. My mom brought her home the day after she was born."

"How is she?" Octavia asked. "What's her name again?"

"Vera," Clarke said. "And she's good, I guess. Still in the eat, sleep, poop, cry, repeat ad nauseum stage. Mom's sent me some pictures, but I haven't seen her in person since she was born. Mom wants to get together, but I've kind of been dragging my feet about it."

"You should go see her," Octavia said. "Your mom is awesome."

"It's not my mom I don't want to see," Clarke said, with enough bitterness in her voice that it halted the conversation. Lexa slid down out of her chair, sitting next to Clarke and putting an arm around her, leaning close to press a kiss to her shoulder. Clarke turned her head to look at her, and even though Lexa was sure she probably wasn't really feeling it, she smiled anyway. 

"You could make her come see you," Raven suggested. "Maybe she'll leave the baby at home."

"I'm pretty sure she's too young for that," Clarke said. 

"Or maybe she'll leave her baby-daddy home," Raven countered. 

"Then she would expect _me_ to help with the baby," Clarke said. "I don't do diapers." She shook her head. "Can we not?"

"Sure," Raven said. 

Clarke pulled the marshmallows away from the fire, maybe a little more done this time than last, but they were perfectly gooey when they smushed them between graham crackers with chocolate. 

"I don't want to go back," Octavia said after a few minutes of quiet; or as quiet as it ever got out in the woods, with the crackling and popping of the fire, the rustle of the breeze and the sometimes almost deafening chorus of crickets, cicadas, frogs, and whatever else was out there. "Can't we just stay a few more days?"

"I have class," Raven said. 

"I have work," Clarke said.

"I have both," Lexa chimed in, "if you count Tae Kwon Do. But I know the feeling." Out here, the only thing she had to worry about was whether to go hiking or swimming or just lay around reading, and what was for dinner and whether she was supposed to help make it. (The answer to that was always no. They'd all been basically banning her from doing any kind of chores all weekend, because it was her birthday. It was both endearing and frustrating, because it was nice that they wanted her to have the chance to relax and enjoy, but it also left her feeling a bit extraneous at times, or like she was just leaching off of them. If there was one thing her father had taught her, it was that you constantly had to prove your value and your worth. You had to _contribute_.)

"I know that it's only been a year," Octavia said, "that I still have a long way to go before I even get out of undergrad, but... I just keep thinking about the future. Like... what's going to happen to all of us? Lincoln and Anya will finish grad school at the end of this year, and Raven will finish undergrad—"

"Hopefully," Raven said, a bit wryly. "That's the goal, anyway. I don't know if it's going to happen."

"It'll happen," Octavia said. "You're the smartest person I know, and the hardest working. If you want it to happen, it'll happen."

"Thanks," Raven said, reaching out her good leg to nudge Octavia's foot.

"Watch it, or her ego will get so big it won't fit in our tent tonight," Anya teased. Raven just looked at her and rolled her eyes, or Lexa was pretty sure she did. It was a little hard to tell, with the glare of the fire between them. 

"So that's three of us gone, and Lexa the year after..."

"Probably not," Lexa said. "With everything... probably not."

Octavia looked over at her, but didn't press the subject. "Still... that's half of us gone all at once. And then when we graduate, Clarke will head to med school and Lexa to law school and me to... it sounds crazy to be saying it, to even be thinking it when I can barely stand to get up and go to class half the time as it is, but I'll probably be going to grad school, too, and we could end up scattered all over the place."

"What are you going to grad school for?" Anya asked. Clarke hadn't really reacted to the announcement, so Lexa assumed that she already knew about it. Lincoln too, and probably Raven, so she was glad that Anya asked. She wasn't sure she would have been able to without it coming across as rude somehow. Not that she didn't think Octavia was smart; that wasn't it. It was just that she really didn't seem like the academic type. 

"Psychology or social work," Octavia said. "Which Bell would flip out if he heard me say that, because my mom pretty much raised him to believe that social workers were evil and out to take him from her, and take me away, and everything else. By the time I was aware of what was going on, she was more stable, so it wasn't as much of a concern. Plus I had Bellamy to look out for me. But... things weren't always great, and sometimes I would 'act out', as they call it, and honestly, the social worker in my middle school probably kept me from becoming a complete and total disaster of a person. She was just... she never made me feel like anything I was doing or thinking or feeling was wrong. She just listened, and helped me figure out solutions to things that worked for me. I'd like to do that. I feel like I could be good at it. Like... I've been there, so I can understand what it's like."

"I think you would be awesome," Clarke said. "The only thing you'd have to be careful about is not telling the parents exactly what you think about them." She grinned, and Octavia laughed. 

"That's true. That would be the hard part."

They were quiet again, and Clarke tipped her head to rest on Lexa's shoulder. Lexa rested her cheek against Clarke's hair, reaching with the arm that wasn't around her to take her hand, linking them together and not caring who saw because suddenly the world felt so big and she felt so small and she needed to not be alone in it. 

Because Octavia was right. They were all going to go their separate ways at some point... and maybe sooner than later. If Anya finished her grad work this year, and then got some amazing job offer somewhere else, what would happen to her? Where would she go? And when they graduated themselves... they'd sort of talked about finding schools in the same area so that they could stay together, but what if that wasn't possible? What if she got into law school on one coast and Clarke got into med school on the other? Could they handle that? Would they be willing to compromise? Could they do it without resenting each other? 

"I'm sorry," Octavia said after a little while. "I feel like I just brought everyone down."

"It's okay," Lincoln said, and Lexa saw him tighten his arms around her. "It's better to talk about it than not to. People our age drive themselves – mess themselves up over stuff like this all the time. They don't know what the future holds – no one does, obviously – but they won't talk about it, either. They just keep it all bottled up until it comes out in bad ways."

"The only constant is change," Raven said. "The friends that you have now probably won't be the friends that you have in five years, or ten." Her tone was flat, almost grim, and Lexa thought she saw Anya reach out to put a hand on her back. 

"But that's what I'm saying," Octavia said. "Or at least that's what I'm trying to say. What if I _want_ the friends I have now to be my friends in five years? Like... growing up, it always felt like it was me and Bell against the world, and having to kind of protect our mother from it, rather than the other way around. And I'm glad that I had him, but he was _all_ I had. Now I've got more than that, and I don't want to lose it. You guys are my fu—my _family_ , you know?"

"Families break apart and come back together all the time," Anya said. "At least mine did. With my parents all active duty, someone was always coming and someone was always going, it seemed like. But that didn't mean that we weren't a family, even when we were apart, and we always came back together."

"We're just all doing such different things," Octavia said. "It seems so unlikely that we'll all end up back in the same place together again for more than just a visit."

"Unlikely isn't impossible," Clarke said. "It was unlikely that we would get along as roommates, but we do all right."

Octavia smiled, but it looked a little forced. "Yeah, I guess," she said. "I guess there's still time to figure it all out."

And then the conversation really did die, and they let the fire go with it, slowly breaking apart and retreating first to the bathrooms, and then to their tents. 

"Well that was intense," Clarke said, once they were cuddled together in their doublewide sleeping bag. "Especially from Octavia. She's not usually a talks about her feelings kind of person."

"Are any of us?" Lexa asked. 

"Lincoln?" Clarke suggested with a laugh. "He's a sensitive guy."

"Meaning he's a guy who refuses to buy in to the whole toxic masculinity idea that has been pushed on him his entire life, either overtly or covertly," Lexa said. "We all tend to keep things pretty close to our chests."

"I guess she's right, though," Clarke said. "We don't know what's going to happen. And it does kind of feel like this is a family. Especially considering that most of us haven't exactly had the best time in the one's that we were born into."

"It does," Lexa agreed. "But only time will tell. Right now, I'm focusing on the fact that we only have one more night here together, and I plan to make the most of it."

Clarke was clever enough not to argue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! I posted a little Clexa Valentine's Day story this morning (because AO3 wasn't letting anyone post anything last night). It's not these two specifically, but you might enjoy anyway! [You and read it here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9767828).


	123. Clarke

Clarke picked up her phone, then put it down, then picked it up again. It was ridiculous to be nervous about calling her own mother. They'd been talking more lately, or at least texting, and everything was actually going pretty well. Having some distance between them helped; if they'd gone back to living together while they were still sorting things out, she wasn't sure that it would have ended as well. But in a way having things actually being pretty good between them made it harder to make the call, because she didn't want to disappoint her mom.

Which was pretty much the story of her life.

She finally tapped on the screen, bringing up her contacts and dialing her mother before she could let herself second guess the decision she'd made. It rang and rang, and Clarke almost hung up, because she didn't want to just leave a voicemail, but then Abby picked up, sounding a little out of breath. "Sorry, sweetheart," she said. "I was holding the baby and had to put her down and then I couldn't find my phone. It had fallen down into the couch."

"That couch –" Clarke started to say, then remembered that they didn't have the couch from her house anymore. "Couches do that," she finished. 

"They do," Abby agreed. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" 

Clarke could hear the smile in her mother's voice, and she swallowed hard. "I was calling about the Fourth of July," she said. "I don't think—" But the words stuck in her throat, and she searched for a bottle of water, unscrewing the cap and taking a sip like that might somehow make it easier to say.

"I understand," Abby said, and the smile was gone. "You want to spend the weekend with your friends."

"There's a big party that the owner of Lexa's dojang—"

"Dojang?"

"Tae Kwon Do school," Clarke clarified. "In Korean it's dojang, not dojo. And dobok, not gi, if you were curious." She forced a smile.

"Good to know," Abby said. "I'll keep that in mind so I don't make myself sound silly if I'm ever talking to someone who does Tae Kwon Do. So there's a party...?"

"There's a party that the owner has every year for the Fourth of July. It's not technically for the school, but people from the school get invited. Assistant instructors, adult students, probably some of the families with younger kids. The people he likes, basically. I guess it's a big deal, and since Lexa's working there she's invited, and I know that if I asked her to come with me to see you she would, and she would miss it."

"And you don't want to come here without her." It wasn't a question, and her mother's voice was unreadable. 

Clarke nodded, then realized that she couldn't see it. There was no point in lying, though. "No," she said. "It's easier when it's not just me. Anyway, what am I supposed to do when you're dealing with the baby or napping or something?"

"I understand," Abby said. "It's fine. Maybe another weekend."

"Yeah," Clarke said. "I mean, unless..." She frowned, biting the inside of her cheek, not sure if she really wanted to say what she had been about to say. But she kept thinking about that night while they were camping when the subject had come up, and Raven suggesting that invite her mom to come see her instead of the other way around. It wasn't a completely crazy idea. Obviously her mom couldn't stay in the apartment with her and Octavia; there wasn't another room and it wouldn't be fair to have her sleep on the couch (and Clarke didn't want to have to give up her bed) so she would have to get a hotel room, but that would give them both some space, and still allow them to see each other. 

"Unless what?" Abby asked. 

"I was just thinking you could come here instead," Clarke said. 

She heard her mother sigh. "Traveling isn't that easy when you have a baby, Clarke," she said. "You have to pack so much stuff, and it throws off everyone's schedule, and..." Silence, and Clarke wondered what she wasn't saying, or whether she was just trying to figure out what to say next. "I'll have to talk to Marcus about it," she said. "There's no way that I can—there's no way that I _want to_ do it alone. So if you're just inviting me, then—"

"No," Clarke said. "No, he can come too. I wouldn't expect you to make the trip on your own. I assumed it would be both of you." She was a little surprised to hear the words coming out her mouth, and even more surprised that she didn't actually mind the idea that much. He wasn't actually a bad guy, and he loved her mother. From everything that her mom had told her, he was really making an effort in the dad department, too, doing pretty much everything that it was possible for him to do, not just leaving it all to Abby to handle. 

"I'll have to talk to him about it," she said. "But it's a possibility, if the hotels in the area aren't all already booked."

"Okay," Clarke said. "Just let me know."

"I will."

"Okay," Clarke said, and then, "Love you."

"I love you too," Abby replied. "I'll talk to you soon."

They hung up, and Clarke set her phone down and put her head in her hands for a minute, then picked up her phone again and texted Lexa.

**CLARKE:** Hey. Where are you?

**LEXA:** Just getting home from the running errands. Why?

**CLARKE:** Are you going to work now?

**LEXA:** Not today. Not either job. 

A second message followed a second later:

**LEXA:** Are you okay? What's going on?

**CLARKE:** Just talked to my mom.

**LEXA:** Are you home? I can come over.

Clarke's eyes filled with tears, and she had to blink hard to bring the screen back into focus.

**CLARKE:** Please.

**LEXA:** I'll be there soon. 10 minutes.

**CLARKE:** Okay.

She set her phone down again and looked around the apartment, making sure that it wasn't a disaster area. Not that Lexa would have cared, but her place was always clean, and there was a part of Clarke that maybe still felt a little bit like she had to impress her, or at least prove that she was just as much of an adult, capable of doing things like picking things up off the floor and washing the dishes, as Lexa was. 

She also took a quick peak into her room, but there was no dirty underwear on the floor or anything, so she guessed she was all right. Not that Lexa hadn't seen her underwear. Not that Lexa hadn't been the _reason_ for her underwear being on the floor. Just one of those weird things that a person does when someone's coming over, no matter how well they know the person. Or at least a thing _she_ did. Maybe it was a holdover from years of having a male best friend, who would have been mortified to see girl panties, clean or dirty. (She had had no desire to see his Underoos either, so she guessed it was fair.)

Ten minutes later, almost exactly, her phone chimed to signal a text message.

**LEXA:** I'm downstairs.

**CLARKE:** Be right down.

She pounded down the stairs, arms crossed over her chest to keep things from getting uncomfortable, and pulled open the front door to the building to let Lexa in. 

"Hey," Lexa said, as soon as she was inside. "Everything okay?"

Clarke nodded. "Just come up."

Lexa followed her up the stairs, and once they were in the apartment, Clarke closed and locked the door, then pushed Lexa back against it, kissing her maybe a little too roughly. Lexa let it happen for a moment, then gently pushed her back. "I can't tell if you're upset," she said, "or if you just want... me."

Clarke sighed, backed up so that Lexa wasn't pinned, but took hold of her hand and led her over to the couch. "I'm not upset," she said. "Not... My head is just in a weird place, I guess. I didn't want to be alone with it."

"I get that," Lexa said. She sat down, kicking off her shoes before putting one leg up on the couch and holding out her arms to Clarke so that she could settle back against her if she wanted to... and god, she wanted to. 

Somehow they managed to find a position that allowed them to at least sort of see each other's faces, without Clarke's shoulder being dug into Lexa's chest. Lexa's arms closed around her and her lips brushed her temple. "You want to tell me what happened?"

"I called my mom to say I didn't want to visit for the Fourth of July," Clarke said. "I could tell she was disappointed, and I thought about what Raven had said, and I just... I invited her here. Her and Marcus, and Vera obviously."

"What did she say?" Lexa asked. 

"She said she would have to ask him about it. That traveling with a baby was a pain, but... she didn't say no."

"Did you want her to?" Lexa asked.

"No," Clarke said. "I didn't. I want to see her. At least I think I want to see her. But... I don't know what that's actually going to be like, you know? They're their own family now, and I don't know how I fit in."

Lexa nodded, and hugged her closer. "The advantage to having them come here, then, is that if things don't feel right, or don't feel great, you've got all of us around you. Even if you don't feel like you belong with them, you'll still have somewhere that you _do_ belong."

Clarke felt her eyes flood again, and she pressed her face hard into Lexa's shoulder. Because she was right. Of course she was right. Whatever happened, she wouldn't be alone with it, and maybe that's why she'd done it, or felt okay about doing it, even if it was only on a subconscious level at the time. 

"Do you want me to ask if they can come to the party?" Lexa asked. "I'm sure that Master Gustus won't have a problem with it."

Clarke blinked. "I'm not even one of his students."

"So?" Lexa shrugged, jostling Clarke slightly with the movement. "It's not just his students that he invites. It's other people that he knows from other places, and he already told me that I can invite you. I don't see why it would be a problem to include your family as well."

"You didn't invite me," Clarke said.

Lexa looked at her, frowning. "I didn't?" She grimaced. "I thought I did. Honestly. It must have been one of those things that I thought really loud, and then assumed had actually come out of my mouth." She smiled wryly. "Do you want to come with me to the picnic?"

"I'd love to," Clarke said. 

"Do you want me to ask about your mom and Marcus?"

"And the baby. Some people don't want babies around."

"I'll ask," Lexa said. "I'm sure it will be fine."

Clarke wasn't, but she didn't want to argue. She didn't want to do anything that might force her out of her safe little Lexa-shaped cocoon. And maybe she was just being a pessimist. Maybe she should just let herself believe, if only for now. She forced herself to nod, tipping her face up, and was rewarded with a kiss.

* * *

Clarke woke up on the morning of the picnic with butterflies the size of pterodactyls in her stomach. It was stupid to be this nervous, she told herself, but it didn't actually help. Her mother and Marcus hadn't gotten in until late the night before due to some last minute snafu at Marcus's job that apparently couldn't wait, and when she'd asked if they wanted her to come over anyway, her mom had said no, it was all right, she would see them in the morning.

She pressed her face into the back of Lexa's shoulder, nuzzling her skin and kissing it until she felt her stir, and shift, and finally she rolled over. "Good morning, Clarke," she murmured, eyes still half shut, a smile curving her lips even as she pressed them to Clarke's. 

"Good morning, Lexa," Clarke murmured back, in between kisses that were somewhere between teasing and insistent, and she would have loved to have given in to them, but she'd promised her mother that she would meet them for breakfast, and by some miracle Lexa had actually slept past dawn, and there wasn't time. "Are you coming?" she asked. "You don't have to."

"Do you want me to?"

_Yes, of course I do,_ Clarke thought. _Everything is better when you're with me._ But she said, "It's up to you."

Lexa frowned. "If you want me to come, I'll come. If you don't want me to, I won't."

"You don't have to—"

"Clarke." There was a note of command in Lexa's voice, probably the voice that she used when one of the kids in Tae Kwon Do was acting up and needed to focus. "I know that I don't have to. I am asking you if you want me to."

"Yes," Clarke said. 

"Okay." Lexa kissed her forehead. "That's all you needed to say."

They got up and got ready, dressing in layers because the restaurant at the hotel would probably be air conditioned to frigid extremes, but the picnic wouldn't be, and they didn't know if they would get the chance to change. "Your car or mine?" Clarke asked.

"Mine," Lexa said. "That way I can leave if I need to, and you can always get a ride with your mom."

"Good thinking." They got into Lexa's car and headed for the hotel, riding the elevator up to her mom's room since Clarke's text letting her know that they had arrived had gotten a response to come up because they weren't quite ready.

Clarke knocked on the door, and it opened a second later. "Come in," Marcus said, stepping aside. "It's been a little chaotic this morning, but we're almost ready."

Abby's eyes lit up when she saw them, and she motioned for Clarke to come over so she could hug her one-armed, the baby being in her other arm and rather, well, attached to her at the moment. "How are you?" she asked. 

"I'm good," Clarke said. "Glad for the long weekend."

"I bet," Abby said. "It sounds like they've been keeping you pretty busy."

"They have," Clarke said, "but it's good. It's actually a lot more research and a lot less getting coffee and making photocopies than I expected."

"I'm glad." Abby looked over at Lexa who was hanging back by the door like she was standing guard. "How is your summer going?" she asked. "Clarke told me that you're working two jobs."

"My job at the dojang is only a few hours a week," Lexa said. "So it's mostly just one job." 

"You're working at a law office?"

Lexa shook her head, then frowned slightly. "It's not a private office," she said. "It's a non-profit that offers legal advice and counseling to people who fall somewhere between needing a court-appointed attorney and those who can afford to call one of those numbers on the side of a bus." 

"Like a legal aid type thing?" Marcus asked.

"Yes," Lexa said. "It's... eye-opening." She said it like that wasn't a good thing.

Abby smiled. "Things like that often are," she said. "I hope that you're at least finding a little time to have fun."

"We—I am," Lexa said. "A group of us went camping for my birthday."

"Clarke mentioned that."

"She didn't hate it," Lexa said, finally smiling a little.

"She mentioned that, too." Abby smiled, and apparently Vera decided that she was done having her breakfast so the rest of them could go have theirs, because Abby handed her over to Kane while she finished getting ready. "I never would have thought it." 

Clarke rolled her eyes. "I don't hate _all_ physical activity," she said. "I even jog sometimes now."

Her mother looked at her like she'd grown another head. "You? Jog?"

"Lexa's a good influence."

"I see that." Abby reached out and ruffled Clarke's hair gently. "Let's go," she said, like she hadn't been the one holding them up. "I'm starving."

Breakfast went surprisingly smoothly, and Vera slept through the entire thing. Conversation was mostly superficial, but that was all right because it meant that they could all participate in it without anyone getting upset. They stayed for a little while after, and then Lexa's phone buzzed. She looked at the screen and frowned. 

"I need to go," she said, standing up.

"Everything okay?" Abby asked.

"It's fine," Lexa said. "I'll see you at the picnic." She touched Clarke's shoulder lightly, and then she was gone.

"Is she really okay?" Abby asked. 

"I don't know," Clarke said. Lexa hadn't looked particularly freaked out by the message, whatever it was, but she was good at hiding things. "I guess we'll find out later." 

She thought about texting Lexa to see what was going on, but she would be driving, and she didn't want to turn this into a big deal if it wasn't. She was relieved, though, when she got a text while they were driving to the picnic.

**LEXA:** Just needed to be emergency ride support. Sorry to run out like that. See you soon. 

"I didn't realize it was so far out of town," Marcus said as they turned onto a dirt road. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

"No," Clarke admitted, "but I'm pretty sure I put the right address into the GPS."

"Okay," he said. But once they got a little farther down the road, they could see other cars parked on the lawn, and then Clarke saw Lincoln's truck.

"We're in the right place," she said. They parked and got out of the car, heading for the back yard where she assumed everyone was gathered. 

She saw Octavia right away, and was greeted with a hug. "You made it," Octavia said. "Where's Lexa?"

"She had to pick someone up," Clarke said.

"Who?" Octavia asked. "Oh, probably your son." She looked at Abby and grinned. "Did you know that Clarke and Lexa have a son?"

Her mother's mouth dropped open, but nothing came out. 

"He's not our son," Clarke said. "He's just a kid that Lexa's been... mentoring, I guess. One of the kids from the dojang."

"Who just happens to look exactly like what would happen if Clarke and Lexa ever had a kid," Octavia said. She pulled her phone from her pocket and tapped on the screen, finally turning it to show Abby. "Doesn't he?"

Abby smiled. "He kind of does," she said. 

"Whose side are you on?" Clarke asked. 

"I'm not on anyone's side," Abby said. "She's just not wrong."

Octavia stuck her tongue out at Clarke, and then her eyes widened. "Speaking of kids, I want to see the baby!"

"She's right here," Marcus said, holding up the carrier. "Let's go find somewhere to sit, and we can see about freeing her from this thing."

"And so it begins," her mother said. "I hope everyone here has a lot of germs. The more she gets exposed to now, the more antibodies she'll have."

Clarke looked at her and she couldn't help laughing. "Is that seriously why you decided to bring an eight-week-old baby to a holiday picnic?"

"I wanted to see you," she said. "But it's definitely a bonus." Abby grinned. "Why do you think you almost never got sick when you were little?" she asked. "There's a method to my madness."

Clarke shook her head. "Once a doctor, always a doctor."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone! Now that it's less than two weeks away, I figure I should say that I'll be at Clexacon. If anyone else is going and would like to meet up at some point, let me know! And don't worry - I'll queue up that Sunday's chapter as a draft so even if I don't bring my laptop with me (still undecided about that) I'll still make the regularly scheduled post. ♥


	124. Lexa

Lexa pulled up in front of Aden's house and found that he was already waiting on the front steps. He stood up and came over the car, sliding into the passenger's seat and buckling his seatbelt. "I'm sorry I had to call you," he said. "Mom got called into work and Dad gets paid extra for working over the holidays, so..." He shrugged.

By now Lexa know that Aden's parents were divorced, but seemed to get along well enough that joint custody wasn't a problem... when Aden's father was around. He was an over-the-road trucker, which she had learned meant that he was one of the people who drove the big rig trucks from one side of the country to the other, over and over again. What it meant for Aden was that he wasn't around a lot, at least physically. Aden said that they talked on the phone or Skype most days, and they got along okay, but sometimes he wished that he was around more. Aden's mother was a nurse who also worked long hours, and in the summer Aden spent a lot of time alone as a result.

"It's okay," Lexa said, and meant it. "I'm glad you did. I wouldn't want you to miss out." 

"No Clarke?" he asked. 

She smiled. "She's going to meet us there," she told him. She found it endearing how often he asked about Clarke, mostly just asking how she was. She'd obviously made an impression, and Lexa wasn't sure if it was just because of the cupcakes or if there was something more going on. Not in any kind of weird way. Just... he seemed like he was kind of a lonely kid, and maybe he just got attached to people who were nice to him. "Her mom and... her mom's boyfriend, I guess. Significant other?" She glanced at him and smiled. "And her baby sister."

"Isn't she kind of old to have a baby sister?" Aden asked, then his eyes went wide as he realized that that could be taken as rude.

"You would think, wouldn't you?" Lexa said. "But apparently not. She was just born in May."

"Wow. So she's really little."

"She is," Lexa said. "But she'll be there. As will Anya and Lincoln and Octavia, and I'm not sure who else."

"Not a lot of the kids," Aden said. 

"No, I don't think so," Lexa told him, and she caught the flicker of relief on his face. He mostly trained with the adults, and he seemed more comfortable with them, even though he was the youngest person in the class. There were other teenagers, but they were high school age. Of course Aden would be starting ninth grade in September. But he seemed slightly ill-at-ease around the junior students, like he wasn't sure whether to treat them like little kids or actual serious TKD students. In his defense, sometimes she wasn't sure either.

She let him pick a CD to put in, and they were quiet for the rest of the drive. As they pulled into the long dirt driveway, she saw Aden's eyes going wide again. "I didn't know he lived on a farm," Aden said. 

"Neither did I," Lexa admitted. Master Gustus had told her that his house was pretty far out there, but he hadn't really indicated how much land the house sat on, and how many other buildings occupied the space. It looked like there were several sheds and at least one barn.

"Do you think he has animals?" Aden asked. 

"I have no idea," Lexa said. "I guess we're about to find out."

They parked and got out of the car, heading for the back where they could see smoke rising up, most likely from the grill. Lexa felt like her breakfast had barely settled, but it was past noon, so it wasn't actually an unreasonable time to be making food.

She saw a flash of golden hair, and headed for it, finding Clarke sprawled out on a blanket spread on the ground, accompanied by Anya and Raven. She sat up, then stood when she saw Lexa, and pulled her into a hug, then did the same to Aden, who didn't seem quite sure what to make of it. 

"I told you!" Octavia said, coming over with Lincoln in tow. "I told you she was probably picking up y—" She broke off abruptly at Clarke's glare, and finished, "Aden."

"I'm going to go say hi to Master Gustus," Aden said. "I'll tell him you're here."

"Okay," Lexa said. Once he was gone, she looked at Clarke curiously. "What was that?" she asked.

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Octavia has apparently decided that if we had a son, it would look like Aden. And keeps calling him that, apparently not considering the fact that it would be number one, biologically impossible, and number two, probably pretty awkward for the poor kid if she said it _to his face_."

Now Octavia rolled her eyes. "It's just a joke," she said. "But he does. Even your mom agreed."

Clarke sighed. "Yes, well, my mom probably hasn't slept more than a few hours at a time in months, so I wouldn't necessarily trust her judgment."

"Also," Lexa said, "given the fact that it is an actual biological impossibility for Clarke and I to actually have a child together, it's a moot point."

"You could totally have a baby together," Octavia said. "You just need some mood music and a—"

"Shut up," Clarke said, and not in a playful way. "Whatever was about to come out of your mouth, don't even think about saying it."

"Whoa," Octavia said, holding up her hands. "Sorry." 

"I was talking about genetics," Lexa said, as evenly as she could manage through gritted teeth. 

"Oh." Octavia frowned. "Yeah, I guess that's true. Which sucks, because you two would have really cute babies."

"Thanks, I think," Lexa said. She put her hand on the back of Clarke's neck, squeezing it gently. Clarke looked at her, still angry but also uncertain, like she didn't know if she was allowed to let that anger go. "It's okay," Lexa mouthed. 

Clarke nodded, and after a minute Lexa felt her relax. She still stayed close to Lexa, but she figured that was more because Lexa was one of the only people she knew here than anything. They were careful about how much they touched, how much affection that they showed, because although she knew a lot of the people here, she didn't know all of them, and she didn't want to make waves. 

After a while they decided to go get some food, and Master Gustus turned his attention from the grill briefly. "Hey," he said. "I'm glad you could both make it." His smile was still a little unnerving, even though she'd seen it more often since she started working at the dojang. "Feel free to show yourselves around. Just don't let the chickens out of their run, and I wouldn't recommend going into the paddock with the horses, but you can—"

"Horses?" Clarke's face lit up. "You have horses?"

"I do," Master Gustus said. "Three of them. They're out past the barn." He pointed. "Don't let any of the younger ones see you, but you're welcome to grab a few carrots from the veggie platter for them." He winked.

Clarke grinned. "It'll be our secret," she said. 

"After we eat," Lexa said, nudging her gently. Clarke pouted, but followed her back to where their friends had plunked themselves down in the vicinity of Clarke's mom, who had a fairly steady stream of people approaching to coo at the baby. The baby seemed perfectly content to be passed from person to person, and Abby was equally happy to let her be handed around.

Aden came over and sat on her other side a few minutes later. She smiled at him. "Did you get food?"

"Yeah," he said. "Before."

"Okay." She sat back and listened to the conversations going on around them, not really trying to follow them particularly, content to just be quiet and observe. After a little while, Aden leaned in to her. "Do you think I could hold the baby?" he asked. 

"I'm sure you could," Lexa said. "Just go ask Clarke's mom."

When he hesitated, Clarke stood up and brushed herself off. "Come on. I'll introduce you." She waited for Aden to stand up, then took him over to her mother, who greeted him with a smile, and waited for him to sit before settling the baby in his arms. 

"Her name is Vera," Abby said. "Vera Louise."

"Two old lady names in one," Clarke said, grinning. "I think we should call her Veelu."

"I think we definitely should not," Abby said. 

"All the more reason." She leaned over and tickled the baby's foot. "What do you think, Veelu? Do you like that name?" The baby just seemed to flail a little, but apparently that was confirmation enough for Clarke. "See? She likes it."

Abby just pinched the bridge of her nose and shook her head, but Lexa could tell that she was trying not to smile. She figured that Abby was probably just happy that Clarke was actually taking an interest in her little sister and not freaking out about the fact that she existed in the first place. 

After a few minutes Aden gave the baby – Veelu now, apparently – back to Abby, and Clarke came back to sit beside her and finish her food. When it was gone, they went back to the food table and snuck a few carrots before heading down to the paddock. There wasn't anyone else around, so when Clarke whistled and the horses came trotting over to see what was going on, there were no witnesses that might have decided to follow their lead. Lexa assumed that Gustus just wanted to avoid them being overindulged with treats. 

"I love horses," Clarke said. "I guess every little girl does, at least for a while."

"I didn't," Lexa said. "Not that I remember."

"You didn't exactly have a traditional childhood," Clarke said. "Did you ever go through a phase when you were completely obsessed with something, though?"

"Joan of Arc," Lexa said. "I was completely obsessed with Joan of Arc for a while."

"Good choice," Clarke said, smiling. She pulled another baby carrot from her pocket and held it out to one of the horses. "I took lessons for a while when I was young, but then we got to the point where I would have started learning jumping, and I got thrown and even though I didn't get hurt – just a banged up elbow and a bruised ego – I decided to focus on other things after that." She shrugged. "Sometimes I wish I'd kept going."

"Maybe you can ride one of these horses sometime," Lexa said. "We can ask Master Gustus. Not today, obviously, but another time."

"Maybe," Clarke said. "I'd like that."

When all of the carrots were gone, the horses lost interest and wandered away again, and they headed back to the party, with a brief stop in the house to wash their hands. Lexa raised her eyebrows at Anya when she saw that someone had brought out several long sticks – they called them _jang bong_ \- and seemed to be trying to arrange some kind of demonstration.

Master Gustus come over to them. "Some of my friends want to see what I've got you guys doing," he said. "You are free to participate or not, as you wish." But he knew that it wasn't really a question. Even the most humble martial artist tended to want to show off a little bit when given the chance. So they grabbed sticks and cleared a space, and then formed themselves into lines. 

" _Joonbe_ ," Anya called, and they all went from standing in a neutral position to fighting stances, sticks held out in front of them. " _Seijak_." 

They went through the long stick forms that they knew, and then formed two lines, facing off against partners to work on a defense drill that they'd been working on that was actually based on the first form. Everything was going well, and a lot of people from the party had gathered around to watch them, when Aden's stick slipped and hit Lexa's in the face.

He realized it immediately, and she watched him immediately drop and begin to do push-ups. She waited for him to count ten, and then said, "Stand up. Go again."

"But—" he started. 

She didn't let him finish. "Again, Aden," she said, turning her head slightly to spit the blood that had pooled. 

"I _hurt_ you," he said. "I can't—"

She fixed him with a frown, and he picked up his stick and held it out. Then ran through the drill once, then again, without a mishap. Everyone else had stopped at that point, had probably stopped as soon as they realized there was something going on, but she ignored them. When they finished the third round, she put her stick at her side and bowed, then reached to shake Aden's hand. 

She kept hold of it for a moment, so that he couldn't walk away. "You made a mistake," she said. "It was an accident. Accidents happen. You can't let that stop you."

"Yes ma'am," he said. "Can I go get you some ice now?"

"Yes," she said. "You can go get me some ice now."

He ran, and as soon as he was gone, Clarke had taken his place. "Are you okay? You're bleeding."

"He's getting me ice," Lexa said. "I'm fine."

"Why didn't you stop?" Clarke asked. "Why did you make him keep going? He was obviously upset."

"I thought that that would be obvious," Lexa said, "especially to you." But Clarke's frown told her that she didn't understand, even a little bit. She smiled, even though it hurt, and even though it sent fresh blood into her mouth. "I made him get back on the horse."


	125. Clarke

Clarke frowned then, because yes, she understood, but at the same time, it seemed a little bit cruel to force a kid to do something that he had just accidentally hurt someone doing. 

"If I didn't make him do it again right then, and prove to himself that he wasn't going to hurt me, he would have turned it into a big thing in his head, and he would have been afraid to do it again in the future. Now he knows he can do it without hurting anyone, and that the one time he did was a fluke, and he won't be afraid next time," Lexa said, like she could read Clarke's mind, but probably she was just reading her face.

Aden came back then with a baggie of ice wrapped in a towel. "Here," he said. "I'm sorry I hit you."

"I know," she said. "It was an accident, and accidents happen. We've all accidentally hit people before. Thank you for the ice." Lexa smiled at him then. "I'll just have to have Clarke kiss it and make it better."

He blushed and looked away, but it had gotten a smile out of him. 

"Go on," Lexa said gently. "It looks like they're bringing out ice cream."

He looked at her like he wanted to say something more, then just nodded and walked away. Lexa put the ice to her face where her lip had split and was definitely swelling. "This will be fun to explain tomorrow," she said. 

"I bet." Clarke slid her arm around Lexa's back, not caring who saw or what they thought. "Should I wait until it's not bleeding to kiss it?"

"Probably," Lexa said. "It might be gross otherwise, and I doubt Doctor Mom would approve."

"I wouldn't be exposing myself to anything I haven't already been exposed to," Clarke pointed out. "But speaking of..."

Her mother had either been watching the demonstration, or had been alerted that there had been an incident, because she was suddenly there at their side. "Let me see," she said. 

"It's nothing," Lexa said. "I've got ice on it."

"I'll be the judge of that," her mother insisted. "Let me see." 

Lexa sighed and took the ice away, and patiently submitted to Abby's prodding. She finally let Lexa's face go. "It's already swelling, as I'm sure you can tell. It would have been better if you'd put ice on it right away and not waited."

"It was less than five minutes," Lexa objected. "We had to finish."

"You didn't have to—" Abby started but Clarke intervened. She really didn't need her girlfriend and her mother getting into it in the middle of someone else's picnic, especially not over something that was, in the end, relatively trivial.

"Let it go, Mom," she said. "Is she okay or not?"

"She's fine," Abby said. "Salt water rinses a few times a day for the next few days and it should heal up pretty quickly."

"Okay," Lexa said. "Thank you."

Abby looked at her and shook her head slightly. "You're going to be stubborn, aren't you?"

"Mom."

"I'll do the rinses," Lexa said. "I didn't _ask_ to be hit. It just happened. It's not the worst injury I've ever taken, and I'm sure it won't be the last. It comes with the territory."

"Which is why I hate watching you," Clarke said. It had taken all of her willpower not to rush out to check on Lexa as soon as she saw her head snap to the side, and then when she'd spat blood... "You make me nervous."

"I know what I'm doing," Lexa said. "Can we not make this a bigger deal than it is? Part of being an athlete is accepting that you may occasionally get hurt. There are circumstances that you can control, and circumstances that you can't. Sometimes one of those circumstances is a five foot long stick wielded by someone who is roughly the same height. He should have had a shorter one; then he would have had better control." 

Abby shook her head again. "I should go check on the baby." She turned and walked away, and Clarke couldn't tell if she as actually upset, or just frustrated, or what. She was tempted to go after her, to tell her that Lexa had that effect on people a lot, but she didn't actually want to leave Lexa's side. She was her anchor here, her safe harbor. 

"Didn't Aden say something about ice cream?" Lexa said. "That's good for a fat lip, right?"

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Let's find out."

People started leaving in the early evening, her mom among them. "We need to get back to the hotel," she said. "Otherwise Vera's schedule is going to be a complete mess, and we'll be suffering for days because of it. Do you have somewhere you have to be tomorrow morning?"

"Work," Clarke said. "Although if you wanted, and Marcus doesn't mind watching the baby, I could probably show you."

"I would love that," Abby said. "What time?"

"It's pretty flexible, but I usually get there around eight-thirty."

"Okay. Do you want to meet for breakfast beforehand?"

"Sure."

"Okay. I'll see you tomorrow morning." Her mother hugged her. "Make sure that stubborn girl of yours takes care of herself," she said. 

"I will," Clarke said. "Don't worry."

"That's what moms do," Abby replied, and let her go. "Say good night to your friends for me. Octavia and Raven and everyone."

"I will. Night, Mom."

"Good night, sweetheart."

Clarke went and found Lexa again, wrapping her arms around her and propping her chin on her shoulder. "My mom says I have to take care of you," she said. "Actually, she said to make sure that you take care of yourself. And she says good night to everyone."

"Good night, Mama Griffin!" Octavia called, although it was unlikely that Abby could actually hear her at that distance. Then again, you never knew, because Octavia was capable of being pretty damn loud. 

"Does your mom give everyone her number, or am I special?" Raven asked. 

Clarke laughed. "Both," she said. She knew that her mother would take Raven under her wing as soon as she met her, and she apparently hadn't been wrong. "She has a tendency to care about the people I care about... and that tends to end up with her deciding to be your emergency mom. And when she says you can call her if you need anything, she means it."

"Yup," Octavia said. "She proofread a couple of my papers last year, because I got to the point where I couldn't even stand to look at them anymore, and I wanted to make sure that they actually made sense. And sent me a care package of chocolate one month because I was complaining about PMS." 

"That was a good month," Clarke said. 

"It was," Octavia agreed.

Anya laughed. "I should have thanked her for Lexa's Easter basket. I probably ate almost as much of it as she did."

" _Almost_?" Lexa asked, and Anya stuck out her tongue. 

"It's nice out here," Octavia said. "There's so much space. Like... I like the convenience of being in the city and having everything you need nearby and there always being something to do, but sometimes... sometimes it feels like it's too much, you know?"

"Uh-oh," Raven said. "Octavia waxes philosophic again. Can you try not to bum us all out this time? It _is_ a holiday."

This time it was Octavia who stuck out her tongue. "Seriously, though. Don't you ever wish that you could _not_ be surrounded by people and noise?"

"I guess," Raven said. "Sometimes. As long as I still had internet access and a workshop."

"Think about it," Octavia said. "Just miles and miles of land—"

"Pretty sure they measure it in acres," Raven chimed in helpfully.

"Whatever. Just a lot of land and then a house, or I guess a few houses, and a workshop and maybe a stable and some chickens and... I dunno... maybe a pond? To go boating in? Or maybe some woods and you could build one of those ropes courses!"

"I'm not exactly going to be voted Most Likely to Climb a Tree any time soon," Raven said dryly.

"Fine, but you could still go boating. Maybe you could build some kind of gadget that you could use to help get you up the tree, and then there could be a zipline to take you... wherever the zipline ended. It would be awesome."

"Is that what you want to be when you grow up?" Raven teased. "A farmer?"

"No," Octavia said. "But..." She paused, frowning, and then her eyes widened slightly. "I remember once I was reading about something, like... shit, I don't remember what it's called, but basically therapy where you take kids out in the woods and you teach them survival skills and stuff."

"The kind where parents pay to have their kids kidnapped?" Raven asked. 

"No, not that kind!" Octavia said. "It would have to be voluntary, but some kids don't do well in just normal therapy, you know? They need something more immersive. Like say you've got issues, whatever they are, and suddenly you're forced to, say, figure out how to cross this rope bridge, and you're all pissed off about it but then you figure out how to do it and then you can talk to the kid about how they solved the problem and how they could solve other problems and apply that to real life."

"They do therapy with animals, too," Lexa said. "Not just dogs, but with farm animals, where it can help people to just spend time with them and taking care of them. Sometimes it's working with rescued animals, even, so it helps both the person and the animal. Like rehabilitating both of them at the same time. Because animals are more trustworthy than people."

"Right!" Octavia said. "So... that would be a pretty awesome thing to do."

"They do it for physical therapy, too," Lexa said. "Horseback riding for people with mobility and balance issues, things like that, people with developmental disabilities. It's a whole thing."

"I did once say that if the whole doctor thing didn't work out, Clarke would make a good physical therapist," Raven said. 

"You did," Clarke agreed, remembering the conversation, and it seemed like so much longer ago than it actually was. She hadn't really thought about it then, because she'd thought it was mostly a joke, but what it if it wasn't? Or... what if it didn't have to be? "And I do like horses," she added. 

"What about me?" Raven asked. "What am I going to be making in my workshop in this little utopic farm for misfit toys of yours?"

"Well, you've got to build your tree-climbing zipline gadget first," Octavia said, "and then after that, you could do other adaptive technology, maybe. Make it so that kids with disabilities can still participate in things like tree-climbing and boating and stuff like that."

"Huh," Raven said. "That's... not the craziest idea I ever heard."

"And me?" Anya asked, laughing. "What are you going to do with a history major?"

"What are _you_ going to do with a history major?" Raven replied, grinning and nudging her shoulder into Anya's. 

"I haven't figured that out yet," Anya admitted. "Most of the traditional avenues aren't necessarily things that I'm interested in pursuing. Like teaching. Not that I hate it, with the right students, but I wouldn't want to teach a bunch of people who are only there because they have to be."

"What do you _want_ to do with it?" Lincoln asked.

"Research," Anya said. "Write articles. Write books."

"So... is that a full-time job?" Octavia asked. 

"It can be, but it doesn't have to be," Anya said. "I guess it depends how successful you are."

"Because you're also really good at motivating people and getting people organized. I mean, look what you did with your discussion sections! We beat the other groups by a landslide. We would need someone to run things, right? To keep everything organized?"

"A secretary?" Anya scoffed.

"Hell no!" Octavia shook her head. "Like... I don't know what the term is, but... the person who's in charge. The director! You would get to boss everyone around."

"I _do_ like telling people what to do," Anya said, smirking.

"So what you're saying is that I should be taking some classes in non-profit management this year," Lincoln said. "At least that's what I'm hearing." 

"It couldn't hurt," Octavia said, turning to smile at him. "I mean, maybe this is crazy, and maybe in a couple of years we'll be scattered all over the country, maybe all over the world, and we won't even remember that we ever had this conversation, but... what if? You know? What if it was possible?"

Clarke felt Lexa shift like she was about to get up, and she frowned. "What about Lexa?" she asked. "Where does Lexa fit in?"

"We'd be dealing with people who maybe aren't in the best position to speak up for themselves," Octavia said. "Theoretically, at least. So we would need some kind of person who could focus on advocacy. Someone who's not afraid to speak her mind, and to stand up for what's right. I don't know anyone who would be better for that than Lexa."

Lexa settled again. "That would be a good use to put a law degree to," she said softly. 

"This is crazy," Raven said.

"But not the craziest thing you've ever heard," Octavia reminded her. 

"No, it's not."

They were interrupted by Aden coming over, looking like he was a little worried that the big bad adults might bite or something. "Um, Lexa?"

She looked up at him. "What's up?"

"I should probably get home soon," he said. "I mean, my mom's going to be home soon."

"Okay," Lexa said. "I'll take you home." She turned to Clarke. "I'll see you later?"

"Yes," Clarke said. "Your place or mine?"

"I thought we were going to the fireworks," Octavia said. 

"Oh, right," Clarke said. "We should actually get going if we're going to stand any chance of finding any place at all with a good view." She realized then that she'd never even asked Lexa if she wanted to go; she'd just assumed that Lexa would be with her.

"I'll see you after that, then," Lexa said. 

"We could meet you there," Clarke said. "Or you could meet us, I guess."

"I'll text you after I've dropped him off," Lexa said. "We'll figure it out."

"Okay." Clarke caught her hand and kissed her softly. "I'll see you later no matter what," she said.

Lexa nodded, and then went to get Aden home. Clarke imagined that he would probably apologize several more times for hitting her, and then a few times for making her leave the party before the rest of them did, and she was equally sure that Lexa would tell him, gently but firmly, that he did not need to be sorry.

"So the rest of us are going?" Lincoln asked. 

"That's the plan," Anya said. 

"Let's head out, then."

They got into their cars and headed back to civilization, where they quickly discovered that finding a place to park was nearly impossible. They ended up parked the better part of a mile away, and by the time they found a place to squeeze themselves in, it was almost dark. Lexa had texted her after she'd dropped Aden off, as promised, and Clarke had been keeping her updated on their whereabouts, but she was starting to lose hope that she would actually manage to find them. 

Patriotic music began to play over speakers spaced along the waterfront, and a few seconds later, a rocket streaked up into the sky and exploded into a twinkling ball of green and gold. It was quickly followed by another, and then another, all different colors and shapes and sizes scribing their various patterns across the night sky. 

An arm slid around her waist, and she jumped, accidentally kicking Octavia in the process. "Sorry!" she said, at the same time that Lexa murmured the same thing in her ear, or at least it sounded like a murmur. It might have been a shout, just to be heard over all the noise of the fireworks and the music. "I didn't mean to startle you."

"I don't mind," Clarke said, "if it means you're here."

"I certainly appear to be," Lexa said. 

Clarke smiled, and turned to put her arms around her, so that they were basically hugging as they watched the colors that lit up the sky. It seemed to go on for a long time, and yet still it was over too soon. When the last explosion had faded from the sky, and the music had stopped, they clung to each other to keep from being separated. 

"Where's your car?" Clarke asked, too loud because her ears were still ringing.

"Home," Lexa replied. "I walked. That's why it took so long. But I knew if I drove down and tried to find parking I would just get frustrated and turn around and go home, and I didn't want you to think I'd abandoned you."

"I wouldn't think that," Clarke said. "That's not who you are."

"Still," Lexa said. 

"If you ask nicely, I'll let you ride home with me."

Lexa raised an eyebrow, then slid her hand under the hem of Clarke's t-shirt, warm fingers gliding over sweat-damp skin, and Clarke shivered and felt goosebumps race over her even though the night had never cooled down. 

"Okay," Clarke said. 

Lexa smirked, her green eyes bright even in the fluorescent glow of streetlamps. "I thought so."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a reminder that I will be at Clexacon next week, but I fully intend to post a chapter on Sunday anyway, barring some sort of complete internet accessibility disaster (which I do not expect to encounter). If anyone else will be there, hit me up!


	126. Lexa

Lexa had barely walked in the door before one of the other interns was in her face, way too close for comfort, and hissing words at her in an undertone so fast that she could barely process them. "Look I'm sorry to do this to you seriously but I just had something come up a meeting that I need to get to across town in five minutes which you _know_ is impossible so look can you just do me a favor and show the new girl around because pretty much you're the only one who doesn't actually have anything important to do?"

She bit back the first words that popped into her head, because no matter how much he might deserve it, 'Fuck you' was never an appropriate response to someone who was, if not your superior, at least a more senior colleague who unfortunately seemed to hold some sway with the powers that be in the office. She suspected nepotism but she'd never been able to make any real connections between him and anyone else in the organization. She hadn't scoured the list of the board of directors, but seemed likely, or maybe a major contributor.

"Fine," she said, her tone clipped, her best fake smile in place. "You owe me one."

"Yeah, sure, what—" But he didn't finish 'whatever'-ing her, because he actually looked at her face then, and what he saw must have made him reconsider. "Right. Absolutely. I owe you one. She'll be here at ten."

Lexa nodded, and watched him dash out the door before going to make herself useful. Some days she wondered if this whole thing had been a waste of her time, but then other days, when some of the people who were actually interested in sharing what they knew with the interns were there, she was sure that she'd made the right choice. 

Unfortunately, today it seemed like everyone was either out of the office or too busy to even find things for her to do, so she ended up just sitting and stuffing envelopes for a while, because they relied heavily on donations to keep them running, and donations didn't come in if mailings didn't go out. 

Finally, a few minutes before ten, the door opened, and someone stepped inside, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the somewhat dim interior after the glare of the outdoors. Lexa found herself blinking right back, because for a minute she'd actually thought she recognized the girl – woman – but she knew it wasn't possible, because the context was all wrong. 

She realized as she stood up that she should have asked her asshole coworker for the name of the person she was supposed to be showing around. She straightened her shoulders and lifted her head, projecting confidence that she didn't entirely feel, but fake it 'til you make it and all that. "Hi," she said. "I'm—"

" _Lexa_?"

As soon as she heard the voice, she knew. Even though it had been years, even though the voice was older, more mature, less accented... she knew. 

"Luna."

"I can't believe it!" Lexa found herself wrapped in a hug that pinned her arms to her sides, which was probably good because she was far too startled to hug back, and by the time she'd gotten over her surprise Luna had let go.

"I can't believe it's you," Luna repeated. "Look at you." She reached out again, this time not quite touching her, her fingers just ghosting over the air next to her arms. "All grown up." She beamed, and Lexa couldn't help smiling back, because it was funny how she was acting as if Lexa was a child that she hadn't seen in years... which of course she was, but the reality of the situation was that they had both been children when they'd last seen each other, long ago and far away.

"So are you," Lexa pointed out. Just like her voice, Luna's face was older, more mature... but still round and it lit up when she smiled just like it always had. Her deep auburn hair was as curly and wild as ever, but now there were a few blue streaks peeking through, a small act of rebellion against the norm. Not that she'd ever concerned herself much with conforming.

"How _are_ you?" she asked. "You work here?"

"I'm an intern," Lexa said. "Just for the summer at this point, but we'll see what happens when school starts again."

"Ah, yes, school," Luna said. "I can't keep track of American years of school."

"I should be a junior next year," Lexa said, "which means two more years of college – university – but I switched my major late last year so... it probably will take longer."

"So you're doing law now?" Lexa nodded. "What was it before?"

"International relations," Lexa said. 

Luna laughed. "I'm not sure you have the makings of a diplomat," she said. "Maybe for a while, until they say something stupid, and then..." She faked a punch at her jaw, which Lexa brought her hand up to block even though she knew she wouldn't connect. "Do you still train?"

Lexa nodded again. "I got my second degree black belt during my freshman year. It shouldn't have taken that long, but..." She shrugged. "What about you?"

" _Nein_ ," Luna said. "When you were gone, I stopped."

"Why?" Lexa asked. "You were good."

"I was good, but I didn't want to hurt people. You know that." She smiled again. "Still, I am proud of you, that you kept going. It was good for you. You needed it."

Lexa pursed her lips. "Why are you talking to me like you're some sage old woman? You're not _that_ much older than me."

"I don't need to be older to be wiser," Luna said, and this time she was the one who moved to block Lexa's jab. "You were so angry. I hope maybe now you aren't so angry."

"Sometimes," Lexa said. "There's still plenty in the world to be angry about."

"You cannot take on the weight of the whole world on your shoulders," Luna said, shaking her head. "You are strong, but you are not that strong."

"No?" Lexa challenged. "Watch me."

"That is why you are going into law? To right the world's wrongs?" 

"I'm going to at least try," Lexa said, then frowned. "If you don't feel the same way, why are you here?"

"There are ways to make change without it always being a fight," Luna said. "There are ways to be strong that don't involve being angry." 

"Spare me the lecture," Lexa said. 

"I'm sorry," Luna said. "I'm not trying to lecture. I just would hate to see you..." She made a gesture like something exploding. "Like you take on too much and it destroys you." She looked at Lexa, brown eyes fixed on green, and cocked her head. "But then maybe you are like a phoenix, and from the ashes you would rise again."

Lexa felt her skin prickle, and knew that she needed to get out of this conversation before it got too personal. "Let me show you around."

The tour of the building didn't take long, since it was basically a big open room with a few offices cobbled together with partitions that didn't even reach all the way to the ceiling, one bathroom, and a small kitchen area. "Most everyone's out of the office today," she said. "A lot of people decided to take their vacation this week. I don't know if they wanted you to start now because it would let you ease into things or what, but I don't actually have anything for you to do."

"What were you doing before?" Luna asked. 

"Stuffing envelopes."

"Then we do that," she said. 

"Sure," Lexa agreed, wishing that there was something – anything – that she could think of to have Luna do. Not that she wasn't happy to see her... but it was strange, and maybe awkward, and she wasn't sure she was actually in the right frame of mind to sit across from someone who she had considered a friend, before she'd learned that it was better not to get attached to anyone when you would be moving again in a couple of years, and play catch-up. It felt like so much of her life wasn't worth talking about, and then more recent events were so depressing... She was just terrible at small talk, and she didn't want to somehow find herself in the deep end with a near-stranger and not even know how she'd gotten there.

Luckily, Luna _was_ good at small talk, and at storytelling, and she was happy to carry more than her fair share of the conversation. She did ask Lexa about places that she'd lived, and Lexa had mostly focused on the time she'd spent overseas, while she was growing up and then the semester in Australia, carefully spinning the story so that it wasn't about a girl who got sent away because she was too broken to function.

Somehow, over an hour passed without Lexa realizing it. She only glanced up at the clock when she heard the bell on the front door jingle, and she looked to see who it was. 

"Hey," Clarke said. "I was in the neighborhood. I thought maybe if you weren't too busy we could grab lunch together."

"I'd love to," Lexa said, "but—"

"You don't have to stay on my account," Luna said. "I will be fine on my own. I can fold papers and seal envelopes without supervision. I don't even have one papercut."

"Oh, sorry," Clarke said, stepping farther into the office and holding out her hand. "I don't think we've met. I'm Clarke."

Luna got up, smiling at Clarke as she shook her hand. "I'm Luna." She seemed for a moment to be searching Clarke's face, maybe looking to see if there was any recognition there, but of course there wasn't. Lexa had never mentioned her to Clarke. It had never even occurred to her to mention her to Clarke. She might have mentioned Luna to Anya at one point, way back when they'd first met and they'd realized they both spoke German. Luna had played a big part in her learning it, after all. 

"Nice to meet you," Clarke said. "You don't mind if I steal Lexa for a little while?"

"You cannot steal what goes willingly," Luna said. "Go. I will keep myself busy."

"If you need anything, just ask anyone," Lexa said. She'd introduced Luna to everyone during the tour; it just happened that everyone was a total of three people that day. "I'll be back in a bit."

"Have fun," Luna said, and went back to the table with the envelopes. 

They stepped out into the sun, and Lexa fumbled in her bag for her sunglasses, squinting until she got them on. "Were you really in the neighborhood?" she asked. 

"Yes," Clarke said. "For values of 'in the neighborhood' that include specifically getting in my car and driving here to take my girlfriend out to lunch, anyway."

Lexa shook her head, but she couldn't help smiling. "Did you have somewhere in particular in mind?"

"No," Clarke said, "although Raven said that there's a taco place a couple of blocks from here that's really good, and then glared at me like she thought I was make some joke about her liking tacos. Who doesn't like tacos?"

"My father," Lexa said. "My father is generally opposed to flavor." 

Clarke laughed. "Okay, fine. But you like them, right?"

"Yes." 

"Okay," Clarke said, and then pulled out her phone and checked the directions to make sure they didn't head the wrong way. 

Judging by the line, the place had to be pretty good, although Lexa guessed it was probably partly due to the fact that the inside was tiny, fitting only a few tables. Most of the seating was outdoors. She wondered how they managed in the winter, when people wouldn't necessarily want to be sitting outside. Maybe they did a lot of takeout business and people just took it back to work or home or wherever. 

Once they'd ordered and gotten their food, they sat down, doing their best to face each other while sharing one side of a picnic table because it was the only place left. After a few bites, they had to agree that Raven was right – the food _was_ really good. 

"I thought you'd told me about all of your co-workers," Clarke said, taking a swallow of her coke, which was imported from Mexico and actually made with real sugar, which was the only reason that she drank it. "I don't remember you mentioning Luna." It wasn't said like an accusation, like she thought Lexa was withholding information from her, but it still sent a pang of guilt through her. 

"Luna's new," Lexa said. "She just started today."

"She seems nice," Clarke said.

"She is." Lexa took a bite and chewed it slowly, swallowed, and finally added, "She always has been."

Clarke's eyebrows went up, but her mouth was full. She made an impatient gesture, silently prompting Lexa to go on and explain.

"It's a small world after all, I guess," Lexa said. "I met Luna when I was nine. It was my father's first deployment with it being just the two of us, and we were sent to Germany. The first thing that he did was get me enrolled in Tae Kwon Do, and that's where I met her. Most of the class was boys, so she attached herself to me, always picked me for her partner... and insisted on teaching me German. We'd come in the summer, so there was a few weeks before school started, but because I'd already made friends with her, I guess my dad must have talked to her parents or something, because instead of enrolling me in the school on base, he got me enrolled in the international school that she went to. Maybe it was coincidence or maybe he pulled some strings, but we were in the same class."

"So you had a friend even on your first day," Clarke said. "That's sweet."

Lexa wrinkled her nose. "I hadn't learned yet that getting attached to people was a bad idea, that you would only end up having to leave them in the end. We'd moved when I was too young to remember, and then we were in Hawai'i until my mom died. I didn't know how it worked yet."

"You always made it sound like you never had any friends at all," Clarke said. 

"Maybe it's easier for me to remember it that way," Lexa said. "Maybe it's easier for me to pretend that I never did." She wasn't even sure if she believed the words herself, but it seemed a plausible enough explanation. It wasn't that she'd ever forgotten Luna, exactly, but she _had_ pushed her to the back of her mind, along with all of the other people that she'd ever made any kind of connection to, to protect herself from the pain of missing them. It hadn't even been a conscious thing. She'd just learned very early how to compartmentalize, and become so adept at it over the years that she didn't even realize she was doing it.

"Now you can't pretend anymore," Clarke said. "Now she's here."

"Now she's here," Lexa agreed. 

"Do you wish she wasn't?" 

Lexa considered that. "No," she said. "It is what it is."

This time it was Clarke who wrinkled her nose. "I hate that expression," she said. "It's like the verbal equivalent of a shrug. Like 'Eh, whatever, I can't be bothered to care.'"

"It's not that I don't care," Lexa said, "it's that I can't change it, and right now I don't know if her presence is good, bad, or indifferent. I don't know who she is anymore, and she doesn't know me. It's been almost a decade, and maybe she's the same as she always was, but I'm certainly not." Except was that really true? Was the person that she was now so different from the person she was when she'd met Luna? She'd been reserved then, and a little closed off, but there had still been a part of her that had been looking for a connection to people. Over the years that part had been eroded, and with Costia's death, she'd thought that that part of her had died with her. But she'd been proven wrong, first by Anya but then, and mostly, by Clarke. She'd started to open back up, started to reach out to people, and to let people touch her, not just metaphorically but physically as well. There is no way that the person she was a year ago would have allowed Luna to throw her arms around her like that.

"I hope it's good," Clarke said. "Even if you've both changed, you're both working at the same place, so that's got to tell you something about the person that she's become, right?"

Lexa nodded. "At least we know we still have some common ground." 

"Exactly." Clarke smiled at her, then then it faltered. "Can I ask why you didn't keep in touch?"

Lexa sighed. "I don't know," she said. "I mean, I do and I don't. Email was definitely a thing, but at the same time, we were young enough that neither of us had email addresses, or I didn't, and if she did, it didn't occur to me to ask her for it. This was before everyone had a smartphone, before everyone was on social media twenty-four seven. It's funny how much can change in ten years. And when someone gets orders that they're being transferred, they don't necessarily have a lot of time to tie up loose ends." She frowned. "It could be that my father just didn't tell me what was going on until the last minute, but I basically didn't know that we were moving until a few days before, when he started packing everything up. We didn't have a lot of stuff; we never accumulated much because it would all have to be moved or thrown out in a year or two anyway."

"Did you at least get the chance to say goodbye?" Clarke asked. 

"Yes," Lexa said. "But I didn't. Not really." She saw Clarke's forehead furrow. "I saw her at school one day, and I knew that I wouldn't be there the next day, but at the end of the day, I just said goodbye like I always did. And she said, ' _Auf wiedersehen,_ which is a standard goodbye, but it means see you later, and I didn't correct her. I wanted to correct her, but I didn't." She picked at what was left of her last taco. "I should probably apologize."

"Do you think she'd hold a grudge all this time?"

"I don't know," Lexa said. "Maybe. I sure as hell held a grudge against my dad for taking me away. I didn't speak to him for over a week. I'm not sure he actually noticed. But after that, after seeing that you could care about someone and then just be gone from them, and you would never see them again... I didn't try again." 

"That's such bullshit," Clarke said. "I'm sorry, but it is."

"I know," Lexa said. "Trust me."

Clarke glanced at her phone. "I should probably take you back."

"Probably," Lexa said. "I don't really want to."

"I don't think you should disappear on her a second time," Clarke said. "If she wasn't holding a grudge before, she might start."

Lexa grimaced. "You have a point." They cleaned up their mess and headed back to the office, where Lexa exchanged a quick hug and kiss with Clarke to shore herself up before stepping inside. 

Luna was waiting for her, all of the envelopes stuffed and sealed and neatly placed into boxes to be taken to the post office. She smiled when she saw Lexa. "See?" she said. "I can keep myself busy."

"I see," Lexa said. "Luna, about—"

Luna waved her hand as if to dismiss Lexa's words before she could say them. "If it's about before, you don't have to say it. I forgave you a long time ago. My parents explained about orders. Let's talk about something nicer."

"Like what?"

"Like your Clarke." Luna grinned. "She _is_ yours, _nein_?"

Lexa felt the heat rise in her cheeks. "How did you know?"

"Because she walked in and suddenly you were alive. Before you were living, yes, but when you see her, it's like a light switches on."

Now she was really blushing. "Oh."

"Yes, oh," Luna teased. "Now tell me all about her."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final reminder that I'm going to be at Clexacon this weekend. Still posting on Sunday - I'm going to save the draft right after posting this so I can post it with a click later! 
> 
> Also, I posted two stories for Clexa Week (so far) - you can check them out [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9997214) and [here](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10026698).


	127. Clarke

Due to an accident at the lab (nothing that jeopardized the experiment, thankfully) Clarke found herself with an unexpected day off. She'd decided to surprise Lexa for lunch, and had in turn been surprised to discover that Lexa had a long lost friend who'd turned up out of the blue. Which got her thinking... and the more she thought she worse she felt, because everything that had happened, everything that they'd had that had crumbled into nothing, had been her fault. She'd blamed him then, but now she couldn't even think of what she'd blamed him for. Being too nice? Being too understanding? 

She hadn't wanted nice or understanding. She hadn't thought she deserved nice or understanding. So she'd pushed him away and told him it was his fault, and maybe he'd believed her or maybe he'd just decided that it wasn't worth fighting over, that _she_ wasn't worth fighting for...

"Fuck."

It had been almost two years since she'd spoken to him. Two years since she'd reached out, and he hadn't reached out either but she'd made it clear that any overtures towards restoring their once unassailable friendship were unwanted. There was no going back now. It was too late.

Wasn't it?

You couldn't just call someone up after two years and say, "Hey, I'm sorry, I was an asshole."

Could you?

Or could you?

She got back to her apartment and was glad to find that Octavia wasn't home. She was either at class or at work (she couldn't keep track of Octavia's schedule, and honestly she wasn't sure how Octavia kept track either) so she had the place to herself. She booted up her laptop and stared at the screen for a long time before finally opening up an app that she used to use all the time, and now rarely touched... mostly because she hadn't wanted to see whether he was online or not. As long as she kept the program closed, he was Schroedinger's ex-best friend. He might be there, or he might not. He might reach out, or he might not. He might forgive her, or he might not.

She clicked on the blue bubble and watched as Skype loaded up on her screen. Her stomach fluttered with butterflies as she watched her contacts load, watched statuses update.

"Fuck," she said again, because there he was. A click away. Just one click, and they could be face to face, even if they were an ocean apart. 

But she wasn't ready for that. Not yet. It was too immediate, too... well, in your face. So she brought up a chat window instead, typed just three letters, and clicked send before she could second guess herself.

**CLARKE:** Hey.

Nothing. No response. But it had only been a second. Then a minute. Then another.

And then, just as she was about to close it down again, cursing herself for an idiot, a reply.

**WELLS:** Hey.

Tears rose in her eyes, and she had to blink them away to see the screen again. 

**CLARKE:** I'm sorry. 

_I'm so sorry. I was a complete asshole and I treated you like shit and I could blame it on grief, and I guess that was part of it but you can grieve without pushing away the people who are trying to help you, the people who have only cared about you and wanted the best for you._

**WELLS:** Me too.

**CLARKE:** Why? You have nothing to be sorry for. It was my fault. It was all me.

**WELLS:** I'm sorry that things ended the way they did. I'm sorry that I let you push me away, and didn't just give you space and then try again later.

**CLARKE:** It's not your fault.

**WELLS:** I didn't say it was. 

**CLARKE:** I won't even try to make excuses. I was a terrible friend, and I get it if you never want to talk to me again, but I just... I guess I just had to try.

There was nothing for a minute, and then a ping signaling that someone wanted to talk to her face to face. She double-checked the name, because there was always a chance it was someone else she hadn't talked to in ages who was feeling nostalgic, but it was him. Of course it was him. She quickly checked her face and her hair, using her phone as a mirror because she didn't have a real one in reach, and then clicked accept.

His face filled her screen, and he was smiling. He was actually smiling, the same old Wells Jaha smile, like no time had passed and nothing had changed. "What are you even talking about, Griffin?" he asked. "I'm talking to you right now."

Her eyes filled again, and she couldn't keep them from spilling over. "Shit," she said, leaning over to grab a tissue. "I'm sorry. I didn't... I didn't think I would be such a mess."

"Stop saying you're sorry," he said. "You're allowed to have emotions, and to show them. Look what happened last time you tried to keep them all bottled up."

"But I _am_ sorry!" Clarke protested. "I owe you like a thousand apologies, for every time I pushed you away or said something mean to you or just generally was a complete bi—asshole to you!"

"Did you just stop yourself from saying the b-word and call yourself an asshole instead?" he asked, his forehead furrowing in confusion. 

Clarke rubbed at her temple. "I'm trying not to use gendered insults," she said. "So... yeah. I guess I did. I mean, everyone has an asshole, so everyone's capable of being one, right?"

"I guess so," he said. "Anything behind this sudden... enlightenment?"

"Just conversations I've had to with people, becoming more aware of the impact that the words we use have on how we perceive the world. Words matter, and I guess I've always known that on some level, but... I'm more aware of it now?" Like she'd never really thought much about the fact that she was white and Wells was black. Now it seemed like every time she turned on the news, another innocent black person had been shot just for being black (although of course they never said that) and the white person that did it never had to face any consequences. Suddenly she was glad that he was in England, where at least there were a lot fewer guns, and maybe less violence overall? She'd never really looked at the statistics. And now that she was thinking about it, she couldn't help wondering if maybe that had somehow been a factor in his deciding to study abroad, not just for a semester but for the duration of his university career (or at least undergrad).

"I guess that makes sense," Wells said. "One of those things you learn in college, even if it's not in class." He grinned, that same lopsided grin that he'd always had. "Sometimes I'm pretty sure that I've learned more outside of the classroom than in it."

"Me too," she said. "How are you? How's England? How's school?"

"I'm good," he said. "Better now that I'm talking to you." He laughed when she rolled her eyes, maybe because it was the first really normal reaction she'd had this entire conversation. "England is good. Different in a lot of ways, and the same in a lot of ways. Older – so much older – than America, it just blows my mind sometimes. And school is good. It's tough, but I like it. I like the challenge, and I think that I made a good choice, even though it's hard being away from everything and everyone I know. What about you?"

"I'm..." She bit the inside of her cheek, sighed. "I won't lie. It's been a hell of a year. A hell of a semester, really. But I'm good now. Better than good. School is good, but..." She shrugged. 

His smile faded slightly. "I feel like you just dropped an overstuffed suitcase at my feet. I don't even know how to start unpacking it."

She laughed, but again without humor. "I don't want to just dump everything on you. I mean, it's... like I said, I'm in a good place now. It just took a while to get there. Here."

"Okay...?"

"You really want to hear the whole saga of Clarke Griffin's Semester From Hell?"

"Lay it on me," he said, patting his hands on his chest. "I can take it."

He really was a better friend than she deserved. 

"It started back at Christmas. You know how things between me and my mom were really bad after Dad died?" He nodded. "Well they didn't really get better after we stopped talking. But I came home from Christmas after having some time away from her, and I was like, okay, maybe we can start over. But then there was this guy, and I guess I kind of knew she was seeing someone, but kind of in that background way where you know it but you ignore it because you don't want to know it? Like that. So he was there, and I found out that she was pregnant, and I just... lost it. I just packed up my shit and got in my car and drove back to school. Except I didn't have anywhere to go, really, but there was this guy I'd met, a friend of my roommate's brother – my roommate's name is Octavia, by the way, and she's awesome, so at least I got lucky there – and he was still in the area, staying in his frat house, and I ended up going there to crash, and... well, alcohol and Clarke doesn't generally lead to good life choices, and we ended up in bed together. The next day I went to stay with Octavia, and then we went back to the city for New Year's and she got stalked and attacked by some guy – she was fine, some friendly neighborhood superheroes saw her and got her away from him, but—"

"Superheroes?" he interrupted. "I assume you don't mean that literally."

"Well, they haven't been dosed with super serum and as far as I know they're not mutants, but... they're as close as people come in everyday human form. More on them later."

"Okay," he said. "Go on."

Clarke ran her hand through her hair. "We ended up spending the night at the frat house again, and, well..." She sighed. "It wasn't that I didn't like him. I did. He was a nice guy. At least I thought he was. But... being the person that you fall into bed with when you're completely stressed out and you just don't want to be alone isn't exactly the soundest base for a relationship, you know?"

"Right," Wells said, making his Concerned face, which made Clarke regret that she'd ever started this story, because wouldn't it have been better, and easier, to just tell him the good parts? 

"Anyway, long story short, I finally told him I wasn't interested... but he wasn't interested in hearing it. He'd decided he was in love with me, that we were meant to be together, and he wasn't going to give up without a fight." She swallowed, pushing back her hair again, a nervous habit. "One day he confronted me in front of the dining hall, basically had me pinned against a railing, and I was pretty close to panicking and no one was paying any attention, and then out of nowhere this girl comes up and is like, 'Hey, weren't we supposed to meet about our project today?' Which was a total lie – I'd never met this girl before in my life, or so I thought – but here she was, stepping in and giving me an out, an excuse to get away from him. And it actually worked. She stayed with me, we had lunch together, and by the time that we left, Finn was gone." Her heart was pounding even as she retold the story, and this really had been a mistake, and she wished that Lexa was here _now_ to make her feel better, but she was still at work, and would be for a few hours. 

"Wow," Wells said. "That's... did he get the hint after that?"

"No," Clarke said. "No, not even a little bit." She fidgeted with the covers of her bed, picking at a loose thread that she'd never noticed before, then realized she probably shouldn't unless she wanted it to develop a hole. "He didn't actually take the hint until he got arrested for assaulting a guy that I was dancing with at a party." Her shoulders slumped. "Which was after I'd gone to campus security and the police. After I'd spent almost two months being afraid to go anywhere alone because everywhere I was, he was, and..." She shuddered. "It sucked. A lot. Seeing him get driven away in a police car was such a relief, but even then I was afraid that he would somehow get away with it and keep coming after me." 

Wells' eyes widened. "He didn't, did he?"

"No. The guy he assaulted, Miller, pressed charges, and honestly, I don't know what happened after that except that he got expelled and banned from campus. I don't know if he ended up in jail or just with community service or if he ended up locked up in a mental health facility because he _clearly_ had some issues he needed to work out, or what. But I haven't seen him since that night, so..." She rubbed at the corner of her eye, which was stinging with unshed tears again. "I guess maybe I should find out. Just in case."

"I'm sorry," Wells said. "I didn't mean to make you drag all of this up. But... you said you're good now?"

"Yeah," Clarke said. "Yeah, I'm good now." She forced a smile. "The girl that came and interceded that day... turns out that she was one of the ones who helped Octavia. Her, her roommate who turned out to be one of my TAs this semester, and their friend Lincoln, who is now Octavia's boyfriend. That day she told me that if I ever needed her, to call her, and of course I thought she was just saying it, but then one weekend I was alone and I was just trapped in my dorm room because I was afraid if I left Finn would find me, and... I really was afraid of what he'd do at that point. So I called her, and we ended up just going out, seeing a really terrible movie and having a nice dinner, and then Finn _did_ show up and so I ended up spending the night at her house just so I was somewhere safe, and..." She swallowed, licked her lips. "Her name is Lexa, and we've been together for about four months now."

"Together? Like... dating together?"

"Yes. Like dating together."

"Are you..." Wells stopped himself. "Congratulations."

Clarke frowned, feeling deflated. She'd really screwed this all up. "Am I what?"

"Just... it seems like maybe, with everything going on, the timing of it..." He looked pained, like he wanted to say things that he was sure were going to upset her, and he didn't want to jeopardize this very recent reconnection.

But Clarke understood what he was saying without him actually needing to finish a sentence. "I know," she said. "It makes it sound like a rebound, or just that I latched on to her because she made me feel safe when everything else was going to shit, and yeah, that's part of it. I won't deny that. But... she's been through a lot, too. And we helped each other find our way out of dark places. We've talked about a lot of stuff that I feel like a lot of couples don't talk about until they've been together for a long time, and maybe never. She just... she makes me feel safe, and supported. She makes me laugh, and she makes me think, and she challenges me to be better. I like who I am when I'm with her a lot better than I like the person that I was, or was becoming, before I met her. She encouraged me to try to sort things out with my mom, not by saying that I had to, that I was under some kind of obligation because she's my mom, but just by kind of pointing out the things that I was saying that gave away the fact that I wanted to, and then by offering to go with me. Which she did, and when we started going down our usual dark spiral she called us both on our bullshit, and now things are better. A lot better. Not perfect, and maybe there will always been some lingering resentment, some rifts that will never entirely heal, but... we're trying. And I don't think I ever would have gotten to that place on my own. She knows when, and how, to push me, and she knows when to back off and just have my back. She's just... she's amazing, Wells. I think you would like her, if you met her."

"I hope someday I can," Wells said. 

"Me too," Clarke said, and realized she meant it. "Here..." She picked up her phone and tapped the Photos icon, trying to hold it up to the screen but realizing that no matter what angle she held it at, the picture still wasn't going to be clear. "Hold on. Does your old phone number still work when you're in England?" she asked.

"It does," he said, "but I'm not actually in England. I'm home for the summer."

"Oh." She looked past him and realized that yeah, he was in the same bedroom she'd been in a million times. "I guess I just assumed since I didn't come home that no one did." She flashed a smile. 

"I wondered. I figured I probably would have run into you by now if you were home."

"Well, my mom moved," Clarke said. "Sold the house. So..." She still couldn't think about it without it hurting, at least a little, and she looked over at the collage that Lexa had made for her, all the pictures of the place that had once been home. She turned her attention back to her phone, texting the picture of Lexa to Wells and just looking at it for a few seconds longer, reminding herself that she had a new home now. 

She saw Wells pick up his phone and tap open the message. "Wow," he said. "She got you to go camping?"

Clarke laughed. "Yeah, she did. She even got me to enjoy it." 

"She really must be some kind of superhero."

"She is," Clarke said. 

Wells turned away from the screen like he was hearing something that wasn't loud enough for Clarke to pick up. "Hey, I gotta go," he said. "I'll talk to you later."

"Yeah," Clarke said. "I'd like that."

"Me too," he said. "Thanks... for reaching out."

"Thanks for actually replying."

"What are friends for?" he asked, then looked away again. "Sorry, Dad's in a hurry. Later, okay?"

"Later," she agreed, and then the screen went dark, and she collapsed back against her pillows. She picked up her phone again, tracing her finger over the image on the screen like she could somehow reach through it and touch Lexa herself.

She switched over to Messages and sent her a text: 

**CLARKE:** My place tonight?

A reply came only a few seconds later.

**LEXA:** I'll come over as soon as I'm out.


	128. Lexa

Clarke buzzed Lexa in, and waited in the open door of her apartment while she climbed the stairs. 

"I brought dinner," she announced, holding up a big paper bag. "I wasn't sure..." She shrugged and stepped in as Clarke stepped aside. "I wasn't sure if this was a good 'My place tonight?' or a bad one."

Clarke smiled. "You're not in trouble, if that's what you're worried about. I'm pretty sure the words that lead up to that are, 'We need to talk.' Which we don't. Not that I don't want to talk to you." Her smile slid away. "Why would you think it would be a bad thing?" she asked. 

"I don't know," Lexa admitted. "I guess I'm just still... I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop." She set down the bag. "I just... you say you want me to come over and there's a part of me that immediately leaps to, 'Something's wrong'. Not necessarily even with us. It might not have anything to do with me. But just that something's happened and you don't want to be alone with it." She swallowed. "I don't mean to be like this."

Clarke's expression softened, and then something lit in her eyes. "Did it never occur to you that maybe I wanted you to come over so that I could drag you into my room, tear off all your clothes, and have my wicked way with you?"

Lexa felt blood rush to her cheeks... among other places... and she had to look away from Clarke's smirking face. "No, and thank goodness it didn't," she said. "I'm not sure how I would have explained my suddenly turning the color of a beet to Luna." 

Clarke laughed. "I'm sure you would have thought of something," she said. "You're clever." 

"She already guessed," Lexa said, "about us."

"I wasn't aware that it was a secret," Clarke said. She picked up the bag and brought it over to the table, pulling out the takeout containers. "Salad?"

"It's from that place that lets you choose what you want on it, with the twenty-seven or however many different dressings," Lexa said, more defensive than she meant to be. "You like that place!"

"How do you know what I wanted on it?" Clarke asked. "You didn't ask."

"Look," Lexa said. "That one's yours." 

Clarke opened the container, and Lexa watched as her forehead furrowed, because she was trying to pretend to be annoyed even though Lexa knew that she'd gotten everything right. "Maybe I wanted to try something different this time," she sulked.

"I think the words you're looking for are, 'Thank you, Lexa. You're an awesome girlfriend with an awesome memory, Lexa,'" she teased. 

"How about I just kiss you instead?" Clarke asked. 

"Are you just doing it to shut me up?" Lexa asked.

"Can you tell the difference?" Clarke challenged.

"Try me."

Dinner was momentarily forgotten, and if the kiss was intended to shut Lexa up, it certainly worked. But it was also an expression of gratitude, with a healthy dose of 'you're awesome', so she was willing to accept the part of it that was hush money alongside. 

They brought the containers over to the couch because as far as they could tell, the kitchen chairs had been selected purely for their aesthetics. They were straight-backed and rock hard, and awkwardly low compared to the table height. Clarke sat at one end and Lexa at the other, and they spread one of the kitchen towels over the cushion in between to be the tablecloth for their little living room picnic. 

"I guess you're not entirely wrong," Clarke said after they'd each had a few bites. "About wanting you to come here being not entirely just about wanting to see you. Or about it being a result of my emotional state." 

Lexa's stomach clenched, and it must have shown on her face somehow, because Clarke immediately shook her head. "It's not a bad thing!" she said. "I just... your reunion with Luna made me think about how sometimes you think that a part of your life has passed, but then it has a way of coming around again, and you two didn't end on bad terms – you didn't really end on any terms at all – and it just made me think about how sometimes life hands you second chances, and sometimes... maybe you can make them for yourself."

Lexa waited for her to continue, not really sure where this was going and trying so, so hard not to let her mind immediately go to dark places. Like Finn. If Clarke was thinking of giving that asshole any kind of second chance—

"I talked to Wells."

_Wells._ Lexa quickly rifled through her memories of the conversations that they'd had about Clarke's past, and it didn't take more than a second to attach the name to the face of the boy who'd shown up in so many of Clarke's childhood photos. Her once best friend, who she'd pushed away when she was dealing with her dad's death, and who she hadn't talked to since sometime in high school. "How was that?" she asked. 

"Surprisingly okay," Clarke said. "I pinged him on Skype and after a little bit of chatting just over text, he switched to video like we used to do all the time. It was..." She shook her head slightly, but she was smiling. "It was really good to see his face. He's so much more forgiving than I could ever be, I think. If our roles than been reversed, and he contacted me out of nowhere, I don't think I would have just been like, 'Hey, no hard feelings, how are you?' But I guess that's just the kind of person that he is... and the kind of person that I am. I try to be open-minded, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, but once you cross me, I can hold a grudge longer than god." 

"Remind me not to get on your bad side," Lexa said. 

"I don't think you ever could," Clarke said. "Not..." She shook her head. "No, I don't think you could. You listen too well." 

Lexa wasn't sure what that had to do with anything, but she decided not to push the subject. This wasn't about her, or even about them. It was about Clarke reconnecting with an old friend. Which she realized that she should be happier about than she actually was. But there was a tiny, ugly part of her that was jealous, because at least with Octavia and Raven their history with Clarke wasn't really much longer than hers. Wells, though. Wells had known Clarke for her entire life, which meant he knew things about her that probably no one else did, and possibly no one else ever would. Including her. 

"He even listened to the Cliffs Notes version of this past semester," Clarke said. "I don't know why I started telling him about it, though, because it didn't actually feel good to drag all of that up. Not that I can just forget it, or should, or even really want to, exactly... but maybe it would have been nice to focus on the things that I'd actually gotten right." She stretched out her leg slightly to nudge Lexa's knee with her toe and smiled.

"So you didn't...?" 

"I did!" Clarke said. "You think I could actually talk about this past semester without talking about you?" She made a face at her like that was the most ridiculous thing that she'd ever heard. "I told him that you were a superhero. I told him that you're amazing, that the way I feel for you is..." Her nose wrinkled. "Okay, maybe I didn't explain that part well. Or not in the best context. He thought maybe you were just..." Clarke stopped. "Don't look like that," she said softly. "Lexa..."

Lexa had tried to keep her face from shifting, from betraying the fact that she was really having a hard time just being happy for Clarke, and had maybe tried a little too hard and gone a little too mask-like instead. "I'm sorry," she said. "Go on."

"No." Clarke pushed herself up and came over to Lexa's side of the couch, shoving the coffee table so she could kneel in front of her, reaching out and taking her hands and pressing a kiss first into one palm and then into the other. "I love you, Lexa. It doesn't matter what anyone thinks. Like I said, I was painting this really dark picture and then I was like, 'She's my knight in shining armor and we've been together four months' and he just thought maybe I had jumped into something before I was ready, like I'd jumped into the whole Finn thing without thinking it through, but it's not like that. It was never like that. It doesn't matter what he thinks; we know the truth. I told him that he'll like you, when he meets you."

Lexa closed her eyes for a little longer than a blink, trying to figure this out, trying to work through how a normal person who wasn't a collection of shattered pieces held together with bits of wire and twine would react in this situation, because she couldn't trust her own instincts. 

"Lexa," Clarke said. "Tell me what's going on."

"I'm glad for you that you talked to him again," Lexa said carefully. "If it's something that made you feel better, I'm glad." 

"But?" Clarke prompted gently. 

Lexa shook her head. "No, Clarke."

"Lexa." She tugged on Lexa's hands until she opened her eyes and looked at her again. " _Talk_ to me."

"But – I know it's wrong, I _know_ it is – but it feels like if you have him, your friend since forever... that's one less piece of you for me." The last words were barely audible, and she expected Clarke to pull away, to get angry at her for thinking that she was something that could be parceled out or possessed. 

What she wasn't expecting was for Clarke to climb up into her lap, wrapping her arms around Lexa's neck and tipping up her face so they were forehead to forehead. "Lexa, love... look at me. _Look_ at me."

She looked. 

"Talking to Wells... having him back in my life in whatever capacity he'll be back, given that he's a couple hours away now, and an ocean away most of the year... it's given me _back_ a piece of myself," Clarke said. "Like saying goodbye to Costia gave you back a piece of yourself... a piece that you could then share with me. Nothing I have with anyone else takes away from what I have with you. Nothing. 'I am large. I contain multitudes.' The more that I have, the more that I have to give. That's how love works."

And suddenly Lexa felt like she couldn't breathe, like there wasn't enough air, because with those words she realized that this wasn't going to work. This was going to end, and it was going to hurt like hell, because she'd thought, she'd really thought...

"I need to go," she gasped. "I'm sorry. I need to go." She pushed at Clarke, not hard, but hard enough that she shifted off her lap, looking bewildered. 

"Lexa, what...?" 

Her keys. Where were her keys? She'd set them down somewhere and now she couldn't remember where, and...

"Lexa." Clarke grabbed her by her upper arms, shook her once, gently. "Lexa!"

"I can't," she said, her voice thick, ragged, her eyes burning. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I can't. I can't do this. I can't be... I'm not who you think I am. I'm not who I wanted to be for you. I thought... I thought I got it, I thought I did, I thought... but I'm not. I don't. I'm sorry, Clarke. I have to go." She tried to pull away but Clarke held on, her eyes wide like she was afraid, like she didn't understand or she didn't want to understand what was happening, what had to happen...

"I'm not letting you go," she said. "I'm not. Because if I let you go..." She shook her head. "Talk to me. Make me understand. There's something going on and I can't help you with it unless you tell me."

Lexa shook her head. "This isn't about—" She stopped herself, because she couldn't say that it wasn't about her. Of course it was about her. It was all about her, all the time, and that was the problem. That was exactly what was wrong. She had taken this good thing and twisted it all around and turned it into something dark with Clarke at the core. "I thought I could get it right this time. I thought I loved you, but—"

She saw the words register, and now Clarke let her go, stumbled back half a step, and just stared at Lexa. "Oh," she said finally. "Oh."

_Shit._ She hadn't meant to say that, hadn't meant it the way it came out, and she wanted to take it back, wanted to unsay the words, but maybe... maybe it was for the best. 

"You deserve better," Lexa said softly, trying to hold herself together. "You deserve someone who can just be happy for you when you're happy. You deserve someone who doesn't assume the worst of everything, all the time, who... who doesn't feel every shift, every change as a threat. You deserve someone who isn't broken. And you'll find her. Or him. I know you will. I thought I could be that person, but..." She just shook her head. "I'm sorry, Clarke."

"No," Clarke said. "No, I don't accept that." She took Lexa's hands, laced their fingers together, held them tight against her heart. "I don't know where this is coming from, but I'm not just letting you go. I don't care what – who – you think I _deserve_. I don't _want_ someone else. I want _you_."

Lexa shook her head again. "You said love... the more you have, the more you have to give, but that's not... I'm not like that," she protested, gripping Clarke's fingers hard like she could force understanding into her if she just held on tight enough. 

"I think you are," Clarke said. "I think you just don't know it yet, because you've been taught all of your life not to care. You've been taught that caring is weakness, that _love_ is weakness, and that's bullshit, Lexa. That's a lie that your father fed you so he had an excuse not to, not to..." Her face creased with anger when the words wouldn't come. "He didn't want to have to deal with you having emotions, because he doesn't even know how to deal with his own, so he taught you to stuff them down and tell yourself that they don't exist.

"But here's the thing, Lexa," Clarke said, letting go of her hands but only so that she could reach out and touch her face, brushing back her hair and letting her hands rest on either side of her neck, her thumbs tracing the line of her jaw. "It didn't work. Not completely. He trained you not to show it, but he never actually got you to stop caring. You act like you don't. You keep it hidden. But I see you, Lexa. I _see_ you. You care. You care _so much_ , love _so much_ that it hurts, and so you hide it to keep yourself from bleeding out, because you think that you can. You think that if you let yourself care, let yourself love freely and without reservation, that you will eventually run out. Because no one ever taught you that love is not finite." Clarke slid a hand around to the back of Lexa's neck, and she felt her finger trace the figure eight of the infinity sign there, healed now, but still somehow Clarke found it. 

"Your world," she said, "for all that you've traveled, for all that you've seen, your world is so small. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can open yourself up, let your world expand. You have dwelt too long in darkness to be fearful of the night, but that's not all that there is, Lexa."

Lexa's breath hitched, and caught, and the words, when she finally managed to push them out of her lungs, were ragged. "'I am half sick of shadows, she said.'"

"Then come into the light, bae," Clarke whispered. 

" _You_ are the light," Lexa said.

"Not all of it," Clarke told her. "I'm only the beginning."


	129. Clarke

Clarke pulled Lexa down until their foreheads rested against each other, waiting for Lexa to look at her, waiting for her to initiate that connection between them, because she was only one half of this equation, and she needed to know that Lexa could, and would, meet her halfway. Because she wasn't sure where things had gone sideways, or why, what switch had flipped in Lexa's head that had landed them here, but she knew that they needed to sort things out here and now, because although she was willing to accept that things weren't always straightforward, that grief and healing were often two steps forward, one step back, she also needed to know that they were never going to have _this_ conversation again. 

Lexa's hands came up, resting on her elbows lightly like she was afraid to grip too hard, but at least she was holding on now. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I don't mean to be like this."

"Like what?" Clarke asked. "Human? Emotional? Don't apologize for that. Not to me. Maybe your father would have wanted an apology for it, but—" She stopped herself. She couldn’t lay all of this on Captain Titus Woods, no matter how much she wanted to (and no matter how true it might be). It might end up backfiring if Lexa suddenly felt like she was in a position where she had to defend her father. "You're allowed to feel, Lexa. You're allowed to show it."

Lexa frowned, her forehead furrowing. "But then you have to pick up the pieces. Again. That's not fair. I feel as if I just take and take and take from you, and what do I give back?" 

Clarke shook her head, her nose brushing against Lexa's in the process because they were so close, and the easy option would be to kiss her, to pour all of herself into touch because maybe that would be easier to understand, but maybe Lexa would just see it as taking from her again, even though it was freely offered, freely given. They couldn't afford to not be on the same page. "It's not about fair," she said. "It's not tit-for-tat. No one is keeping score. There is no winner and loser, or there shouldn't be. When you're happy, I'm happy."

"But what happens when you're happy and I'm not?" Lexa asked. 

"Then we figure out why," Clarke said. "Which is what I thought we were doing."

Lexa sniffed, nodded. 

"Right. So you think that if I reconnect with Wells, that there will be less of me for you. Right?"

"Yes."

"And I'm telling you that that's not how it works. Does what you feel for Anya take away from what you feel for me?"

"No," Lexa said. "Of course not."

"And Aden? Does the fact that you care about him – and don't even try to tell me that you don't, because you've always told me that you don't say things that you don't mean – take away from what you feel for me?"

"No," Lexa said again. 

"Do you think that my friendship with Octavia or Raven takes away from what we have?"

"No."

"Then what's different about Wells?" Clarke asked. 

"He's known you forever," Lexa said. 

"So?" Clarke frowned, because she really wasn't understanding. 

"So he knows you better than—" Lexa stopped.

"He knows me better than you do?" Clarke asked. Could that really be what was bothering Lexa so much?

"Yes," Lexa said. "You two have a lifetime of history."

Clarke smiled. "Yes," she agreed, "we do. But you seem to be forgetting one thing."

"What's that?" Lexa asked. 

"That _we_ have a lifetime of history still to be made."

"Oh," Lexa said, more a shaping of her lips than an actual word.

"If you want it," Clarke added. 

"I do," Lexa said. "I..." She swallowed. "I'm sorry for what I said before. When I said I thought—I love you. I love you more than I imagined I could love anyone. I love you so much it feels bigger than I am, so much that it scares me sometimes, because if I lose you..."

"So you tried to leave me now so I couldn't leave you later?" It made a heartbreaking kind of sense, if you ignored the fact that it didn't make any sense at all, because when, at any point, had she ever given any indication that she had any intention of leaving Lexa? 

"Like ripping off a Band-Aid," Lexa said. "Better to just do it fast and get it over with."

Clarke closed her eyes, then opened them again. "I need you to promise me something," she said. "I need you to promise that you will never do that again. If you ever say to me again that you can't do this, that you don't want to be with me... you have to mean it. Not because you're trying to protect yourself from future pain, not because you think I would be better off with someone else, but because you absolutely, genuinely feel that we have reached the end of the road, and that even if we still love each other, we will do each other more harm than good if we continue. Because I'm not going to keep calling your bluff, Lexa. I'm not going to keep letting you cut me because you feel like you deserve to bleed."

"I promise," Lexa said, finally stepping away from the wall that she'd basically backed herself into, and Clarke stepped back with her. "Never again. I swear."

Clarke nodded, and let her go but kept hold of one hand, leading her back to the couch and their barely-touched dinner. "Do you think you can eat?" she asked.

Lexa nodded. She seemed calmer now as she sat down, and Clarke sat opposite, but close enough that she could keep her free hand on her. They ate in silence, and when the food was gone they set aside the containers and Clarke crawled back into Lexa's lap, settling against her and closing her eyes as Lexa's arms folded around her. 

"From the moment I met you," Clarke said, "my world changed. You didn't know me. You had no reason to care about me. You stepped up, stepped in anyway, and then refused to back down. You acted as a shield when I needed one, and a shelter, and every single thing about my life has been better with you in it. If, sometimes, that means I have to talk you down off an emotional ledge because you're still figuring out what to do with a heart that's too big for the box you tried to stuff it in, well... it's a small price to pay, as long as we don't keep finding ourselves on the same ones over and over again." 

She pressed a kiss to the side of Lexa's neck. "I love you too," she said. "And I will be your light, but I can't be your world. I can't be all that you have, or all that you want to have. We can make each other's world's bigger – you by showing me all of the things outside that I haven't seen yet, and me by helping you learn how to let all of the things outside fill you up inside. But you have to be willing to let them."

Clarke felt Lexa flinch, and she lifted her head to look at her face. "Tell me," she said gently. 

"The more people you let in, the more likely you are to lose them," Lexa said.

"That's true," Clarke said, "but the more people you let in, the more people you have to support you while you deal with losing one of them, whatever the reason. You don't have to do it alone." She tucked back a lock of Lexa's hair. "Do you remember what you said to your dad, when you told him that you were going to change your major to law?" Lexa didn't answer. "You told him that you were going to be better than he was. Is. So be better, Lexa. Not just with the law. Don't follow in his footsteps. He taught you, at least by example, that you are meant to go through life alone. That if you needed other people, you were weak. But that's not how life works. That's not how being human works. Has he ever been happy?"

"Before my mom died," Lexa said. "Not after."

"There you go," Clarke said. 

"I tried," Lexa said. "I tried to be good enough, strong enough, smart enough, so that he would be happy with me. I tried."

Clarke felt her fingers start to curl into fists and she forced them to relax. "That wasn't your responsibility," she said. "He was supposed to take care of you, not the other way around." She kissed Lexa softly, back by her ear. "It's not your fault that he was unhappy, Lexa. It was never your fault. But it was _his_ fault that _you_ were."

She felt Lexa start to shake, felt her jaw quiver, and she had gone too far, maybe, but she couldn't stop with the job half done. "Let's be happy," she said. "Let's choose a life that's full of light and laughter and love. Let's fill it up with people who make us smile and make us think and make us stronger and smarter and better and _more_. It's your life, Lexa, not his."

"Our life," Lexa said, but it came out a sob. "It's our life."

"Yes," Clarke said, and then she didn't say anything else because Lexa crumbled, just completely melted down, and for a second she wondered what she'd done wrong and how she could fix it but then she realized that maybe this was just what Lexa needed, because look at the hell she'd been through and that she'd never really dealt with. If she needed to cry, Clarke would let her cry, and hold her while she did... and maybe cry a little herself because it had been one hell of a day, hadn't it? For both of them.

Finally, the wrenching sobs slowed to sniffles, and Clarke handed Lexa a napkin (because they were closer than the tissues) to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. "Better?" she asked. Lexa nodded, and Clarke did too, peeling away stuck strands of hair from her face. "Good," she said. 

Lexa tucked her head into the curve of Clarke's neck. "I—" she started, and then stopped. "Thank you," she said, which made Clarke sure that what she'd been about to say was, 'I'm sorry.' But maybe she'd finally realized, finally heard what Clarke had been telling her all along, which was that she didn't have to be sorry. 

"You're welcome," Clarke said. "I know you'd do the same for me." 

She heard a key in the lock, but decided not to move. They weren't doing anything that Octavia could object to, unless she felt like being a real pain in the ass, and Clarke hoped that she was observant enough to notice the fact that Lexa's eyes were puffy and red from crying, and she would keep any comments that she had to herself.

"Is it safe?" Octavia called, "or do we need to go away again?"

"It's safe," Clarke said, and then wondered what she meant by 'again'. Unless maybe she'd come home a little while ago and heard Lexa crying, even through the door, and decided to turn around and wait it out elsewhere. If that was the case... she probably owed her one. 

Octavia and Lincoln came in, and Lexa straightened up slightly, but not enough to actually dislodge Clarke from her arms. "We come bearing gifts," Lincoln announced, holding up a grocery bag containing several pints of ice cream. 

"It sounded like maybe it had been kind of a rough day," Octavia added. 

"Kind of," Clarke agreed, although it was an understatement. It had been a hell of a day, and she might tell Octavia about it later, or she might not. Right now, she appreciated the fact that she was acknowledging it without making a big deal about it. 

"What flavor do you want?" Lincoln asked, holding up the containers. "Or do you just want a scoop of each?"

"A scoop of each," Octavia said, grinning because she knew he hadn't actually been asking her. "A scoop of each for everyone. Let's live dangerously." 

"Given the fact that I'm pretty sure one of the flavors has peanut butter and another one mint... it might be a little more dangerous than you bargained for," Lincoln said, but he dished it out anyway, while Octavia disappeared into her room and came out wearing a set of purple pajamas emblazoned with unicorns. 

"My mom got them for me for my birthday," she said. "I don't even know. But I need to do laundry, so you can just all shut your mouths." 

"Or fill them with ice cream," Lincoln said, handing out the bowls. "Be right back." He went into Octavia's room and came back wearing a pair of fuzzy bunny ears. 

"What...?"

"I don't have any bunny slippers," Lincoln said, "so this was the next best thing. Or is this not what a slumber party looks like?"

It was Lexa who laughed first, and Clarke wasn't sure if it was at the bunny ears, or the slumber party comment, or what, but it didn't matter, because she was laughing, and it was the most beautiful sound she'd heard all day, even beyond hearing Wells' voice again. "Does that mean we should change?" Clarke asked.

"Yes!" Octavia said. "I assume that Lexa has pajamas here."

"Why would I?" Lexa asked. "It's not like they would stay on."

Octavia's eyes went wide, and Clarke found herself with a face full of pillow, because of course Octavia had thrown it with her left hand and missed her target. She set it aside and got up, pulling Lexa up after her so that they could go change. 

Clarke rifled through her drawers, finding pajamas for both of them – hers the space ones her mom had given her for Easter, Lexa a blue pair with clouds and rainbows, which were probably from the Easter before. They went back out into the living room and took up their spots on the couch. 

"Should we ask what happened?" Lincoln asked.

Lexa glanced at Clarke, who shrugged. "I think a lot of stuff just got stirred up," Clarke said finally. "Lexa ran into an old friend, I reached out to my best friend who I haven't talked to in years... You think you've dealt with things and then it turns out maybe the past isn't as past as you thought it was."

"Must have been the day for it," Lincoln said. "I got a call from a friend I met volunteering last summer, found out she's in the area for a while."

"Really?" Clarke asked. "That's cool."

"It is," Lincoln said. "I'd love for you to meet her, and I think it'd be nice for her to get to know people, help her feel more at home."

"What's her name?" Clarke asked.

"Luna."

Lexa's jaw... and spoon... dropped. " _Du kennst—_ You know Luna?"

Lincoln frowned. "Wait, _you_ know Luna?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "That's the friend Clarke was talking about. We knew each other when I lived in Germany. She was the one who started teaching me to speak German. We met at the dojang I trained in there, my first day. She helped me figure things out." She smiled. "She was my best friend."

"It's a small world after all..." Octavia sang. "That's crazy."

"It's sure one hell of a coincidence," Lincoln said. "A pretty awesome one. I didn't know she did Tae Kwon Do!"

"She doesn't anymore," Lexa said. "She said she quit after I left. She was good, but she hated the idea of hurting people."

"Sounds about right," Lincoln said. "Well, I guess there's even more reason to have her meet everyone. I'm sure Anya will want to meet her."

"Wait," Clarke said. "I just realized – she knew you when you were little. I have someone to ask for Little Lexa stories!"

"She might not remember," Lexa said. "It was a long time ago."

"But she might," Clarke said. 

"You realize I can do the same with Wells, now that you're talking to him again."

Clarke lifted her chin, pretending to get all haughty. "I have nothing to hide," she said. "And you would have to meet him first."

"Oh, that can be arranged," Octavia said. "What did you say his last name was again?"

"I didn't," Clarke said. "And now I never will."

"Uh-huh," Octavia said. She picked up her phone, typed something quickly. A second later, she grinned. "Facebook, here I come."

"What the—" Clarke reached out and grabbed Octavia's phone, looked at the screen. At the top of the list of messages it said Mama Griffin, and under that, 'What's Wells last name?' And her mom had answered. Her mom hadn't even asked why. "Oh, you b—weasel," she said. "You will pay for that."

Octavia snatched her phone back. "And it will be so, so worth it."


	130. Lexa

Lexa flopped into the chair that had once been Clarke's father's, but that had since relocated to their living room (where it completely didn't match the décor) after the sale of Clarke's house. It made the space a little crowded, but it also meant that they actually had places for people to sit when they came over (which seemed to be happening more often lately) so it wasn't all bad. "What's wrong?" she asked, because she'd been watching Anya scowl at her computer for the last fifteen minutes while she'd made lunch. "Also, I made you a sandwich." She nudged the plate toward her.

" _You_ made _me_ a sandwich?" Anya asked, her eyebrows lifting. 

"Yes," Lexa said. "But if you're going to be like that, I'll eat it myself."

Anya laughed. "Thank you," she said, picking up the plate. "I guess I lost track of time."

"School?" Lexa asked, inclining her head toward the laptop. 

"No," Anya said, rubbing the bridge of her nose and rolling her eyes. "School would be easy compared to this."

"Compared to what?"

"Trying to find something to do in this city that isn't just... something that you can do any time."

"There's concerts and stuff," Lexa pointed out. "And theater, and all kinds of things."

"Yeah, I know..." Anya shrugged. "Just nothing that feels... right."

"For...?"

Anya looked at her, then immediately looked away, and Lexa thought she might actually be blushing. The color in her cheeks couldn't be blamed on the heat, in any case, because the air conditioner was running and the room was actually kind of chilly. (The trouble with central air in a relatively small condo with only one heating zone, they'd found, was that in order to get the bedrooms cool, the living room sometimes ended up borderline arctic.) "Just..." She shut her laptop. "Never mind. Don't worry about it."

Lexa knew better than to push, so she just let it go. A minute later, Anya had the laptop back open, and was eating with one hand and scrolling with the other, and cursing softly as crumbs fell onto the keyboard. Lexa pulled out her phone and opened up the Kindle app, going back to the book that she'd been reading, although it was hard to concentrate when it was obvious that Anya was keeping something from her. Not that she had any obligation to tell Lexa anything... but wasn't that what friends did? 

Was she even really Anya's friend, or was it just that Anya was hers? She'd been trying to make their relationship less one-sided (hence the sandwich) but sometimes she thought maybe it was futile, that they'd gone too far off the rails and they could never just be friends anymore. (Which made it sound like something that it wasn't... it was more than Anya had become an almost parental presence in her life for a while, and now the dynamic between them was skewed.) 

She tried to push the thought aside. It wasn't productive, and she was trying, _really_ trying, not to let herself spiral into those dark emotional places where she started to question and doubt everything. After what had happened with Clarke, what she'd tried to do, what she quite possibly would have done if Clarke hadn't called her on her bullshit and refused to back down... She had to change. She had to actually put in the effort and really change how she approached life, and relationships. If she didn't want to live in shadows, she had to actually, actively, let the light in.

And she was trying.

"Damn," Anya swore. "That would have been perfect, too..." She sighed. 

Lexa was pretty sure that Anya had been talking to herself, but she tried anyway. "What would have been perfect?" she asked. 

Anya looked up at her, seemed to assess her for a minute, and then pushed her hair back out of her face. "There's an exhibit opening at the aerospace museum about women in aviation. I guess there's a party, a sort of sneak preview kind of thing, where people can get early access to it... but it costs way more than I can afford." She shrugged. "One of those things that's really only for big donors, I guess."

"That's too bad," Lexa said. "When is it?"

"Friday," Anya said, looking back at her screen. "The exhibit officially opens next week."

"You could still go see the exhibit," Lexa pointed out. 

"I know," Anya said. "And I'm sure w—I will. But it would have been nice to get to see it before it gets crowded, you know? To really get a chance to take time and look at things. And it looks like they're going to have some special guests, too, some of the women that are actually in the exhibit and stuff, or connected with it."

"Yeah," Lexa agreed. She hadn't missed Anya's slip. She'd been about to say 'we', and Lexa was absolutely sure that she hadn't been referring to the pair of them. There was someone else that Anya was doing this for, or trying to... 

She tapped out of her book and went to look for the exhibit online, finding the details of the opening 'gala'. Which was in two days. She looked at the list of sponsors, and at the lists of guests, and then after she cleared the dishes, she went into her room and closed the door, and did something that she hated doing, but she was willing to bite the bullet for a good cause.

"Hey, Dad?" she said, after he picked up with his usual terse greeting of, 'Woods', even though his phone had to show him that it was her calling. "I need a favor."

The next day, she came home from work to find Anya already in the kitchen making dinner. She dumped the plastic containers her lunch of leftovers had been packed in into the sink to be dealt with later and then went over the breakfast bar and sat down on her usual stool. "So... you know that exhibit opening thing you wanted to go to?" 

"The one that I in no way can afford?" Anya asked, glancing over her shoulder. "What about it?"

"Do you still want to go?"

"Yes," Anya said. "But like I said—"

"Good," Lexa said, cutting her off. "Because your name is on the guest list. Plus one."

Anya went still, and slowly turned to look at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that your name is on the guest list. When you show up, you go to the door and you say that your name is on the guest list, and they'll check and then they'll let you in."

Anya's eyes went wide. "How...?"

"It's the aerospace museum," Lexa said. "Planes, space shuttles, all things flying, right? And as you may recall, I just _happen_ to know someone who has some connections within the United States Air Force. I made a call. Some strings were pulled. Your name is on the list. Dress nice."

Anya stared at her for so long that whatever was in the pan started to burn, and she cursed and turned back to it to keep it from being completely ruined. Crisis averted, she turned her attention back to Lexa. "You asked your dad to get me on the list?"

Lexa nodded. "I figured he owes you a few."

"He doesn't owe me anything," Anya said. "I didn't – nothing I've done this entire time has been for him."

"Nevertheless," Lexa said. 

"But why?" Anya asked. 

"Because it matters to you," Lexa said. "Because I can. Because it's about time that I did something for you instead of you always doing things for me."

"You don't owe me anything," Anya said. 

"I owe you my life," Lexa said. Quiet. Intense.

Anya turned off the heat under the pan and came around to put her hands on Lexa's shoulders, looking her right in the eye. "No," she said, "you don't. You were the one who chose to live. You were the one who kept fighting. I just helped give you the tools."

Lexa didn't want to argue about it. She knew what Anya was saying, understood where she was coming from, but you couldn't just negate that kind of a debt. You couldn't just wave it away and pretend like it didn't exist. That wasn't how anything worked. 

She swallowed, traced her tongue over her bottom lip. "Friends help each other," she said finally. "It's what you did – do – for me, and this was a way that I could do it for you. Just go and have a good time."

Anya looked at her for another long moment, then pulled her in and hugged her, and Lexa slid off the stool so that she could hug her back properly, pressing her face into Anya's shoulder. She felt Anya's hand on the back of her head, and she closed her eyes and just let herself be held, because it felt good.

Finally Anya let her go, but her hands lingered on Lexa's arms. "Thank you," she said. "It's... just thank you."

"You're welcome," Lexa said. "Now how about we eat before the food gets cold?"

* * *

Lexa almost forgot about the event, until she came home from work on the day of and found Anya in her room in just underwear and a bra, door wide open and half of her wardrobe strewn over various pieces of furniture, cursing. 

"Um... everything okay?" she asked.

"I have no idea what to wear," Anya said. "At all. This is like... semi-formal, right? And if you went to the trouble of having your father get me on the list, I need to at least look decent."

"You always look decent," Lexa said. "I'm pretty sure it's not that dire." She was also pretty sure that Anya's wardrobe panic had little, if anything, to do with wanting to make a good impression on the people sponsoring the party. Anya still hadn't told her who she was going with, or admitted that it was a date... but it was the only logical explanation.

Or it would have been the only logical explanation if Anya was the type of person who went on dates. 

But maybe that was Lexa making assumptions. Just because Anya was asexual didn't mean she couldn't want to go out with a person, right? When Anya had first told her about it, she'd looked it up online, and she'd discovered that not feeling sexual desire and not feeling romantic desire were two totally separate things. So it was possible that there was someone that she was interested in romantically, and she was freaking out because this was their first date (if it was anything other than a first date, Lexa was pretty sure that Anya wouldn't be so worried about it), and that meant that it was her responsibility, as a friend, to reassure her that everything was going to be fine. Even if she was pretty sure that there was no way for any relationship that Anya ever had to not be complicated... but again, she might just be making assumptions.

"Do you want help?" Lexa asked. 

Anya looked around at the mess she'd made, and finally nodded. "Please."

"Okay." Lexa walked into the room and began to sift through. There were a few dresses in the mix, which kind of made her head hurt because she had a really hard time picturing Anya in a dress. Given the fact that they were on the top, like they'd been the last resort before Anya gave up completely, she suspected that _Anya_ had a hard time picturing Anya in a dress, too. 

"Where's that blazer that you wore to that department party?" Lexa asked. "The one that looks like a mix of a tuxedo and a military jacket."

"You don't think it's too warm for it?" Anya asked.

"I don't think it will be in the museum," Lexa said. "They'll have the AC on like the place is filled with people, but it won't be." 

"Good point," Anya said. 

"And..." Lexa weeded through and finally found the pants she was looking for draped over the back of a chair. "These will look good with it," she said, "but not _too_ formal. You don't want to look like you're going on an interview."

The corner of Anya's mouth quirked. "No, I definitely don't."

"And something with a little color," Lexa said. She found a sage green top and handed it to her. "Put it on; we'll see how it looks." She turned her back while Anya dressed, putting discarded items back on hangers and returning them to the closet. Not that she figured Anya cared if she watched her change; they were used to it from the dojang locker room and sharing a bedroom all last summer. But she didn't want to make Anya feel any more on the spot than she already did.

"Okay," Anya said. 

Lexa turned around and smiled. "You look amazing," she said. "Seriously."

"Thanks," Anya said. She turned to look at herself in the full-length mirror that was mounted to the inside of the closet door. "I do look pretty good, don't I?"

Lexa rolled her eyes. "Do you know what shoes you're going to wear?"

"I don't have that many choices," Anya pointed out. "But yes, I've got those sandals that somehow manage to be both nice-looking and comfortable, so that's what I'm going with."

"Okay," Lexa said. "I'll leave you to it."

She went to go fix herself something to eat. She thought about waiting until Clarke got here, but there was no guarantee that she wouldn't already have gotten something, and she was hungry now. At least she had the night off from TKD; she wasn't sure that she had it in her to deal with family class tonight, even if Aden would be there. She'd been spending more and more time with him lately, driving him home from class more often than not. He'd even gotten her to download Pokemon Go, and sometimes they would spend the last little bit of daylight after class hunting for little animated monsters before she dropped him off. (She told herself she was only doing it because it was something that he was into, but the truth was sometimes she played even when she wasn't with him. Her only consolation was that there seemed to be plenty of other adults out in the streets sans children with their eyes glued to their phones, too. And sure, they might have been reading emails or sending texts, but the quiet hisses of, 'Yes! Got it!' tended to give them away.)

"Have fun," Lexa said when Anya finally emerged from her room, hair done and make up on. Not much, she never wore much, but just enough to turn her from beautiful to stunning, and Lexa hoped that whoever she was meeting appreciated it. 

"You too," Anya said, already distracted as she grabbed her keys from the hook where they were kept. And then she was out the door, and Lexa really did hope that she had a good time. 

Clarke arrived a little while later. "Sorry," she said as she flopped down on couch next to her. "I would have been here sooner but Raven was having a crisis."

"Seems to be the night for them," Lexa said, turning her head to kiss Clarke's upturned face. 

"Oh?" Clarke's forehead furrowed. "Everything all right?"

"Not me," Lexa said. "Anya. She had a date and couldn't figure out what to wear."

"Raven too," Clarke said. 

And suddenly the pieces clicked into place, and Lexa's eyes widened. An exhibit on women in aviation. Not something that she necessarily would have expected Anya to show any significant amount of interest in, but Raven, on the other hand...

"Did she say where she was going?" she asked.

"Some museum thing," Clarke said.

Lexa bit her lip, fighting a smile. "Oh."

"What?" Clarke asked, and then her jaw dropped. "No."

"I think so," Lexa said.

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"Huh." Clarke seemed to consider it, then shrugged. "Good for them, I guess," she said after a few seconds. "I guess I noticed they were getting closer, like when we were camping, but I figured it was just because it was us together, and Octavia and Lincoln, so they just stuck together out of default. Maybe not."

"Maybe not," Lexa agreed. 

Clarke frowned again. "But Anya..."

Lexa lifted a shoulder, let it fall. "And Raven knows it," she replied to the end of the unspoken statement. "They're big girls. They can figure it out."

"I hope so," Clarke said. "Because it would really suck if they couldn't."

"They'll figure it out," Lexa said, with maybe more confidence than she felt. "So what do _we_ want to do tonight?"

"I dunno," Clarke said. "Nothing that involves effort. Movies?"

"Okay," Lexa said, "but I'm choosing which one this time. You've already proven you can't be trusted in that department."

Clarke laughed. "Yeah, yeah. I'm never going to live that down, am I?"

"It was a pretty terrible movie. Especially for a first date!" Lexa teased.

"It wasn't even a date!" Clarke said. 

"Wasn't it?" Lexa asked. "A movie, dinner, and then I brought you back to my place. Sounds pretty date-like to me." They both knew that the situation had been a lot more complicated than that, but there was some comfort, at least for Lexa, in being able to go back and recast the events of that night in a more positive night. 

"It _was_ the night I started to fall for you," Clarke said. "In hindsight."

"Exactly."

"So maybe you should let me pick the movie after all," she said. "I mean, considering the end result of the first time."

Lexa laughed. "What were you thinking?"

"The new Ghostbusters movie opened today," Clarke said. "The one with the female cast."

Lexa tried very hard not to smile. "I dunno... I've heard terrible things on the internet from men whose childhoods have been ruined by it."

Clarke grinned. "Yes. Exactly."

Lexa stood up and offered Clarke her hands, pulling her in and kissing her. "Okay. If it's going to piss off whiny men on the internet, let's go."


	131. Clarke

Clarke told herself that it was silly to be nervous about seeing Wells. They had been best friends for most of their lives, since practically before they were able to talk. As soon as they hit the developmental age where they were capable of playing together in an interactive way, they'd been doing so, and for a long time she'd thought that nothing would ever change that. But then her father had died and she'd fallen apart and basically rejected everything from the past because it all reminded her of him. Wells had let himself be pushed away, but then he'd been there waiting when she'd decided it was time to reconnect, and there was a part of her that thought maybe it would be just like old times, like they could just pick up where they left off, and sometimes it even felt like that when they were texting or talking, but there was another part of her that was pretty sure that it was impossible to just erase the time that had passed where they weren't friends – they weren't anything – and if she was being honest, she wasn't sure that she wanted to.

She was a different person now than she had been then, and so was he. Maybe the changes were subtle, but they were there. He was a little more reserved, a little more mature, than he had been when they were in high school. Maybe it was just with her; she didn't know but she would completely understand if that was the case. Maybe it was just part of growing up. Whatever it was, it had a little part of her worrying that maybe they were better off keeping things long-distance. Phone and Skype only. 

But when Wells had said he wanted to visit, to actually see her and talk face-to-face, she hadn't been able to say no. She hadn't _wanted_ to say no, or at least not much of her had. So she'd said sure, yes, absolutely, but she only had a couch for him to sleep on, and he'd said that was all right. And he'd talked about how he was excited to meet the people that she was always talking about, and she wondered if he was really talking about everyone, or if he was just talking about Lexa. Who she hadn't talked about that much since that first conversation, because she was afraid that no matter what she said, he would twist it around somehow into something that it wasn't. 

Maybe it was a good thing that he was coming. He could actually meet her, and then he would understand. He had to.

She waited at the train station, and finally his trained pulled in, half an hour late, and she searched the crowds of people getting off until they slowed to a trickle, and still he wasn't anywhere, and she checked her phone to see if she had somehow missed a message from him saying that he wasn't coming after all, but there was nothing, so she scrolled back and double checked that this was the right train, which it was. 

Just as she was about to go searching for him, thinking maybe she'd somehow missed seeing him in the crowd, and he had somehow missed seeing her standing there waiting (exactly where she'd told him she would wait), she finally saw him... carting the bags of a little old lady with a walker and an oxygen tank. She seemed to be talking his ear off as they made their incredibly slow way down the platform. He just smiled at her, and then an older couple came rushing past to claim her, and he finally strode over, his backpack slung over his shoulder, and grinned. "Sorry," he said. "It didn't seem like anyone was going to help her and..."

"And you're a complete Boy Scout," she said, rolling her eyes but grinning, because what she'd just seen was pretty much the epitome of Wells Jaha. For a second they just stood there, looking at each other, and then he held out his arms and she fell into them, hugging him tight as he squeezed her, leaning back so that she was up on her tiptoes before setting her back down. "I'm just glad you got here."

"Me too," he said. "Sorry I didn't text you about the delay. The signal was terrible."

"It's all right," Clarke said. "Come on, let's go." She made her way back to the parking garage and he dumped his backpack into the back seat of her car before sliding into the passenger's seat. She buckled her seatbelt and backed out, making her way slowly around the turns (she hated parking garages, they made her nervous) until they were back out in the light of day. "Did you want to drop off your bag first?" she asked. "I mean, it should be fine back there, but..."

"It's up to you," he said. "I just came to see you. I didn't have any big plans."

She bit her lip. "I hope you don't mind that I kind of planned that we would go out to dinner tonight," she said. 

"Why would I mind? We can catch up."

"Not just us," she said. "Everyone."

His eyebrows went up, just for a second, but then he nodded. "Sure," he said. "No problem." 

"I wasn't thinking about the fact that traveling would probably suck and you might not feel up to dealing with a bunch of people on your first night in town, and it was also the easiest night to actually get everyone together."

"It's fine," he said. But she wasn't actually sure that it was. She was sure, though, that even if it wasn't, he would rise to the occasion and make the best of it, because that was what he did. 

"We've got a little while," Clarke said. "I might as well show you the apartment." She turned the car towards home, and they chatted as she drove about nothing in particular. Mostly she pointed out various sights to him, figuring maybe something would pique his interest and they could check it out later, since he was here all weekend.

When she parked, she saw that the Blakes' car was there, which meant that either Bellamy was visiting or that Octavia had the car. They'd been doing okay sharing it, but every once in a while Octavia started grumbling about how it seemed like every time she needed it for anything but getting to work, Bellamy had some excuse as to why he needed it more. 

"Sorry there's no elevator," she said as they climbed up to the fourth floor. "We were kind of pressed for time and we just took the first place available that was livable."

"It's okay," he said. "Just puts a few more steps on my tracker." He held up his wrist and wiggled it, showing the black band that seemed to be practically ubiquitous in one form or another these days as everyone decided that it was time to get more active. Not that she didn't understand the sentiment – and she actually _had_ been getting more exercise lately, going out jogging with Lexa sometimes when she inevitably got woken up at the crack of dawn by her crawling out of bed. (Sometimes she just stayed there and waited for her to come back... and every once in a while she convinced her that she didn't want to go out after all...) But she didn't need a little gadget to tell her how well (or badly) she was doing at it.

She unlocked the door and pushed it open, letting Wells precede her so she could lock it again behind them. "Here it is," she said. "Home temporary home."

"It's very... eclectic," Wells decided, turning to grin at her. 

"We didn't really do anything about the décor that was already up," Clarke said. "We just added some of our own stuff around it. We're only living here a couple of months. It didn't really seem worth the effort to do more than that."

"Oh, this isn't where you live during the year?" he asked. 

She thought she'd explained this already, but maybe not. "The school requires students to live in on-campus housing for the first two years," she said, "unless you can prove you've got extenuating circumstances that would make it too difficult." 

"Like what?" he asked. 

_Like your girlfriend dies over the summer and you spend a semester abroad and your friend doesn't trust you to be left alone for any significant stretch of time,_ Clarke thought, but she didn't say that. "Like if maybe you're not fresh out of high school, and you're still going the traditional four year full-time route, but you're married, or you have a kid, something like that," she said, since those were the most common reasons. 

"Ah, gotcha," he said. "I lived on campus this past year, and I might next year, but some friends are thinking about getting a flat, so I might end up doing that instead."

"A flat," Clarke said, smiling. "Look at you. I suppose I should have apologized for the lack of a lift instead."

He rolled his eyes at her. "Sorry, I didn't know I wasn't allowed to speak English here, only American."

"I was only teasing," she said.

"I know." But he didn't sound like he'd found it particularly funny. 

It wasn't until it stopped that Clarke realized that the sound that she'd been hearing and not really processing as anything other than white noise was the shower... and then a second later the door opened and Octavia stepped out. Naked. And screamed.

"Fuck!" she said, dodging back into the bathroom. "Goddamnit, Griffin!"

"Do you not believe in towels?" Clarke asked.

"I believe in them, I just don't have any!" Octavia snapped. "I realized after I was already under the water that I hadn't actually brought one in here with me. They're all clean and folded in the laundry basket in my room. I figured it wouldn't matter, though, since I was home _alone_."

"Um. Sorry?" Clarke went into Octavia's room and grabbed a towel from the basket. "Here," she said, knocking.

Octavia cracked the door opened and snatched it from her hand, and a minute later she came out wrapped in it and stalked across the hall to her room.

"Sorry about that," Clarke said. "She doesn't normally wander around naked." 

"I didn't see anything," Wells said. "I was looking at that painting. Is it one of yours?"

"No," Clarke said. "I haven't painted anything in a while."

"Oh," he said. "Too bad. You were really good."

"Thanks."

Octavia emerged from her room. "Hi," she said, holding out her hand to Wells like nothing happened. "I'm Octavia. Clarke's BFF and roommate. You must be Wells, Clarke's OG BFF."

"I must be," he said, smiling at her and shaking her hand. "I didn't see anything. I swear."

Octavia laughed. "Okay," she said. "My fault if you did, I guess. It's nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you too," he said. "I've heard a lot about you."

"I've heard a lot about you too," she said. "I thought about stalking you on social media, but decided against it."

"I... appreciate that," Wells said. "I think."

Octavia just kept grinning. "Reservation is for 6:30," she said. "Lincoln's meeting us there, and I need to ride with you because Bellamy is coming to get the car. He's kind of put out that you didn't invite him."

She couldn't tell if Octavia was joking, or if Bellamy had been when he'd said it to his sister. "I was trying to keep the number of people reasonable," she said, "and I know he works nights. I didn't see the point."

"And also you didn't want to risk drama," Octavia said. 

"Also that," Clarke admitted.

Wells looked back and forth between them, and he was too polite to ask, but Octavia wasn't too polite to answer. "My brother Bellamy and Clarke's girlfriend Lexa aren't exactly each other's biggest fan," she explained. "Mostly because my brother can sometimes be a dick and Lexa has no patience for that, and she kind of put him in his place one time and I don't think his ego has recovered."

"Oh," Wells said. "Part of her superhero alter ego?" he asked, smiling crookedly at Clarke.

"I guess," Clarke said. "It was... a weird night. She wasn't in the greatest place, and he poked exactly the wrong button, and ended up pinned against the wall."

"She _attacked_ him?" Wells asked.

"She immobilized him," Clarke said. "Temporarily. To get his keys away from him so that he wouldn't decide to drive drunk."

"It was kind of badass," Octavia said. 

"Huh," Wells said, but Clarke watched as he mentally put another tally mark in the 'con' column of his mental inventory of the girl that she loved. 

"Is Raven bringing Gina anyway?" Clarke asked, wanting to change the subject. 

"No, she's got work too," Octavia said. "Sorry, Wells. You're kind of going to be the seventh wheel. Sort of. I think. There's still kind of a question mark there."

"You're just going to tell him all of everyone's secrets, aren't you?" Clarke asked, partly annoyed and partly amused. Nothing that Octavia had said was actually really a secret, but she wasn't sure that Raven and Anya would want to have the status of their relationship (question mark?) discussed with people they didn't even know.

"It's fine," Wells said. "I'm just happy to have the chance to meet you all." Which sounded genuine enough. 

"Also, you're going to be completely outnumbered," Octavia said. "Five to two."

"What do you mean?" he asked. 

"Five girls. Two guys. And Lincoln knows better than to pull any kind of macho anything, given that at least two of the girls can completely kick his ass. Well... I guess just two of the girls. One could build a robot to do it for her." 

"I'll... keep that in mind," Wells said. 

"Let me show you my room," Clarke said, just because she needed a minute away from Octavia. 

Wells followed her down the short hall, and she opened the door and let him inside, closing it behind her. He looked around, taking it in, and she couldn't tell what he was thinking. Which bothered her more than she wanted to admit. She'd always known what he was thinking, and now... it was like she was looking into the face of a stranger, almost. 

He went over to the bed and picked up Octopillow, flopping its knitted arms before setting it down again. He looked over at the wall and noticed the collage there and went to look at it. "Your house," he said, smiling. 

"Not anymore," she said. "Lexa took those for me so that I would always have a piece of it, even when it was sold." 

"It's really nice," he said. "God, it really brings back so many memories."

"Yeah," she agreed. "It really does."


	132. Lexa

Lexa checked herself again in the mirror, tucking back a stray strand of hair and then tugging her shirt straight. She tried to tell herself that it was silly to be nervous about meeting Clarke's childhood best friend... but she wasn't very convincing. She already knew that he didn't like her much, based on what Clarke had said about her the first time that they'd talked after so many years. Or... that wasn't exactly it. He didn't like her based on his interpretation of what had happened between them, and the reasons behind it, her possible motivations. But it was all wrong. He had gotten it all wrong, and maybe Clarke had already sorted that out, but the truth was that she hadn't actually said much beyond the fact that they were still calling and texting each other, and that he'd decided that he wanted to see her and she'd agreed. 

She told herself that it didn't matter what he thought of her, because it wasn't going to change how Clarke felt about her. It wasn't going to change anything between them. They were good. They were solid. They didn't need his stamp of approval... but would Clarke want it? 

She just had to be on her best behavior. That was all. 

"You ready to go?" Anya asked. "And are we taking one car or two?"

"Are you picking up Raven?"

"Yes," Anya said. "Why?"

Lexa frowned, giving herself one last glance in the mirror before switching off the bathroom light and stepping out into the hallway. "I don't even know. I guess we can ride together. It's not like we won't be coming home to the same place."

"Okay," Anya said. "Let's go, or we'll be late."

Lexa followed her out the door, slipping on a pair of sandals before descending the stairs and stepping out into the heat. The air was sticky, dense with humidity, and she found herself instantly regretting the fact that she'd chosen to wear a white shirt, because it would get sheer as soon as it soaked through with sweat. But it was too late now, and she had a cami on under it so she would be all right. Probably. She hoped.

She got into the front seat even though she knew that she would have to switch to the back as soon as they got Raven, because Anya got testy if she didn't, saying that she wasn't a chauffeur. It was only a few minutes to Raven's apartment, and she was already waiting outside for them, so they were on their way quickly. 

"If you survived meeting the parents, you can survive this," Raven said, looking at her through the rearview mirror. 

"Parent," Lexa corrected, also trying to fix her face because clearly she wasn't doing a very good job at keeping it neutral. "I know. Just..." She shrugged, sighed. "I just don't want to make things weird."

"How would you make things weird?" Anya asked. "Just be yourself."

Lexa snorted. "Because that always works so well," she said dryly. "Miss Congeniality I am not."

"And yet Clarke loves you," Raven said. "Like _loves_ you." She grinned at her in the rearview mirror.

"I know," Lexa said, smiling back despite herself. "But it's different with her."

"How?" Anya asked. 

"Because..." Her smile faded. "Because when I'm with her I can just be myself. I don't have to pretend to be someone else."

"And why would you with her friend?" Raven asked, and it was really starting to feel like they had planned this, like Anya and Raven had some kind of good cop, bad cop routine worked out between them, except neither of them was actually the good cop or the bad cop. 

"Clarke understands that I'm not..." Lexa waved her hand, not sure what the right way to phrase it was. "That I'm not always stable, I guess. That sometimes things happen in my head and I can't help them or stop them, and sometimes things come out... not the way I want them to as a result. She knows sometimes she has to listen to what I'm not saying more than what I am. She _understands_ me."

Both Anya and Raven were quiet for a moment after that, processing or formulating an argument to tell her why she was wrong, she wasn’t sure. Finally Anya spoke. "You'll be fine," she said. "You'll have Clarke there, and me and Lincoln, and Raven and Octavia. All people who know you, and like you. The only unknown factor is Wells, and if he sees that everyone else likes you, even if you're occasionally a little abrasive, I think that he'll like you, too."

"And if he doesn't?" Lexa asked.

"Why do you insist on borrowing trouble?" Anya asked. "Why not just give him a chance? Why not give _yourself_ a chance?"

"You're only as broken as you let yourself be," Raven said. 

Lexa pressed her lips together, wanting to make some kind of kind of snappy comeback, but the truth was that maybe out of everyone, Raven was the most qualified to actually make that statement. She could have let what happened to her crush her. She hadn't. She kept fighting, even when the odds seemed stacked pretty heavily against her. 

"I'm not broken," Lexa said finally.

"Okay," Raven said, turning around in her seat to look at her. "And you love Clarke, right?"

"More than anything."

"Then don't worry. If he doesn't get that, that's on him." She turned back around, and they were quiet for the last few minutes of the trip. Anya parked next to Lincoln's truck, and they headed for the restaurant, deciding to wait outside even though it would have been more comfortable inside in the air conditioning, since Clarke, Wells, and Octavia weren't there yet.

When they arrived, Octavia immediately went to Lincoln for a kiss, and under most circumstances Lexa might have done the same with Clarke... but these weren't most circumstances. She didn't want Clarke to feel like she was being put on the spot, so she hung back a little and waited for introductions to be made.

"Everyone, this is Wells," Clarke said. "We've known each other practically since birth, so yes, he knows every embarrassing story there is to know about me. But I also know every embarrassing story there is to know about him, too, so hopefully he'll keep that in mind." She grinned. "Wells, this is Anya, Raven, Lincoln... you already met Octavia..."

"And how," Octavia said, grinning. Wells laughed. 

"And this is Lexa." Maybe she imagined it, but she thought Clarke's voice got a little bit softer when she said her name... not in volume, but in tone. 

"Nice to meet you," Wells said, shaking everyone's hand, which seemed oddly formal, but what could you do? When he got to Lexa, she thought he hesitated just a little – not when taking her hand, but when releasing it, like he was taking an extra few seconds to size her up – but again, she might just have been imagining it. 

"Let's go in," Clarke said. She let the rest of the group go ahead of her, catching Lexa's hand as Wells slipped past and squeezing it. "Hey," she said softly.

"Hey," Lexa said back, and then leaned in and kissed her, just the slightest brush of her lips, because she wanted to reassure Clarke... or maybe herself... that just because Wells was here didn't mean that things were going to be weird between them, even after (or maybe because of) the meltdown she'd had back when Clarke had first said she'd gotten back in contact. 

Clarke smiled, her eyes lighting up, and they stepped into the restaurant still holding hands. 

A quick look around told them that the reservation they'd made probably hadn't been strictly necessary, but it had only seemed fair that they give the place some warning that a party of seven would be coming in during what could potentially be a dinner rush. They were shown to a booth in the corner that was three-quarters of a circle, and arranged themselves around it, which was complicated by the fact that Clarke had to be on one end because she was left-handed, and Raven had to on an end as well because of her leg... and really they should have both been on the same end because it was her left leg, but they finally decided that she would be okay with it being under the table as long as she could angle it so that it wasn't knocking into anyone.

There was also some awkwardness as they tried to figure out who sat next to who, because the only person here that Wells really knew was Clarke, so it made the most sense for him to sit next to her... which meant that Lexa couldn't. She ended up sitting between Anya and Lincoln instead, basically as far from Clarke as a person would be at a round table.

"We could ask them to put some regular tables together," Anya said quietly. "It might make more sense."

"It's fine," Lexa said. And it was. She didn't _need_ to sit next to Clarke. They weren't actually attached at the hip. "Everyone at a long table makes conversation awkward, and there's more room to put stuff this way."

"Okay," Anya said. 

Clarke smiled apologetically, and Lexa smiled back, wanting to reassure her that really, she was okay, and people were making a bigger deal of it than it really was. Then they all turned their attention to the menus, trying to decide what appetizers and dishes they wanted to order, figuring that they could all share them. Once the (huge) order had been placed, there was a moment of somewhat awkward silence, like no one was quite sure how to start the conversation.

It was Wells who finally spoke up. "So... I just want to make sure that I have this straight," he said. "I've heard about all of you, but I'm not sure I've actually worked out how everyone is connected."

"You might need to draw a diagram," Lincoln said, grinning. "It gets complicated."

Wells smiled back at him. "You're Lincoln," he said, "and you're dating Octavia."

"Right," Lincoln said.

"And Octavia is Clarke's roommate, and one of her best friends."

" _One of_?" Octavia asked, mock-offended. 

"With Raven being the other," Wells said, gesturing to her and getting a nod. "Raven may or may not be dating Anya—"

"Oh for fuck's sake," Anya said, rolling her eyes. She pointed at Octavia, "You better hope next week isn't a sparring week, kid."

Octavia grinned. "Oh, bring it," she said. 

"Except she can't, actually, because she would get in trouble for going too hard on a color belt," Lexa said. "No matter how much they might deserve it." Wells looked baffled, his verbal diagramming derailed, and for a second Lexa regretted saying anything at all. But when conversation didn't immediately pick back up where it had left off, and Wells still looked confused, Lexa decided to take pity on him. "Lincoln, Anya, Octavia and I all train together in Tae Kwon Do," she explained. "Anya's third dan, I'm second, Lincoln's first, almost second." She stopped at his even more baffled look. "Dan is another word for degree for black belts," she clarified. "Octavia only started back in January, so she just got her green belt in June. Which means that no matter how much she mouths off here, Anya can't actually fight up to her own level against her, because it wouldn't be fair."

"And I started training because these three," Octavia gestured, "saved me from being abducted, raped, and or killed by some creep on New Year's Eve." 

"Wait, so the guy who stalked Clarke—"

Lexa saw Clarke wince, and wished that she could reach her to comfort her, but she couldn't without it being really obvious. 

"Totally different guy," Octavia said. "The guy who stalked Clarke was one of my brother's frat brothers, Finn."

"Who also happens to be my ex, only I didn't know that he considered himself my ex at the time," Raven said. "I only found out after I transferred schools to come here and be with him, and he was already infatuated with Clarke. But instead of fighting over the guy, we both dumped him, and we stayed friends."

"And it was really after I dumped him that he turned into a stalker," Clarke said. "And when Lexa stepped in and defended me from him when it was first starting to escalate."

"Right," Wells said. "And Lexa is your girlfriend. And... Anya's roommate."

Anya nodded. "I was her RA last year, and then—" Lexa nudged her, afraid of how much she might say that he didn't need to know, and she pressed her knee against Lexa's under the table, like she was trying to silently reassure her. "Then I graduated and moved off campus, and it just seemed dumb for her to have to move in with a complete stranger after coming back from her semester abroad, so we got a waiver on the freshman and sophomores must live on campus thing and she moved in with me."

"Ah," Wells said. "I guess that makes sense."

"And just to make things a tiny bit more complicated, there are two people who aren't here who are kind of also attached to this group," Octavia said. "My brother Bellamy, who as I mentioned was friends with Finn, and who is dating Gina, who is Raven's roommate."

"I probably _should_ have written that all down," Wells joked. "But anyway, it's nice to meet you all."

Their appetizers arrived shortly after, and conversation turned to the usual college things – what everyone was doing for the summer, what everyone was majoring in, what their plans were post-college... Lexa found herself mostly staring at her food, listening to everyone else and not feeling like she had anything to contribute, or at least unable to summon the energy required to interject herself into the conversation. 

But then somehow conversation turned to Anya having been Raven, Octavia, and Clarke's TA for their history class, a connection that had gotten missed in the original diagramming of connections, and how she had bribed them to do well on tests by feeding them.

"That's how I met Lexa," Clarke said, and Lexa looked up to see her smiling. "She came home and found the place full of students, and made a hasty retreat to her room. When Anya asked for someone to go tell her that dinner was ready, I volunteered."

"You volunteered?" Lexa asked. "I thought she sent you."

"I was trying to get extra credit!" Clarke said. "I told you that. Or at least brownie points." She grinned. "But she didn't answer the door when I knocked, so I just went in, and she had this beautiful picture hanging on her wall, and we started talking..." She shrugged. "The rest, as they say, is history."

Raven snorted. "If you leave out all of the drama and angst in the middle," she said. "I seem to remember you weren't exactly sure of what you wanted."

Clarke glared at her, but if Raven noticed, it didn't stop her. "Lexa kissed her and she freaked out and ran away," Raven said. "And she came home and got rather intoxicated and the whole story came out, and then I had to take her phone away so she didn't drunk text Lexa and say anything she might regret."

Wells looked at Clarke. "Why were you so freaked out?" he asked. 

"Because I was still kind of dealing with the aftermath of Finn no longer being in my life, and... I guess I'd been telling myself for a while that what I was feeling for Lexa was just friendship, and gratitude, and nothing more than that. I wasn't ready to deal with what I was feeling."

"And she knew that?" Wells asked.

" _She_ is right here," Anya said. "Why don't you ask her?"

"I knew that she'd been through a lot," Lexa said. She hesitated, then added, "So had I. And the only time anything felt right was when I was with her. So I took a chance that maybe she felt the same way. When she ran... I figured that was it. I was ready to accept that that was it, and that maybe I'd ruined one of the only good things I had going for me."

"But she hadn't. I went back the next day, and we started to figure things out, but she had something she needed to do that took her out of town for a couple of days, and by the time she got back, I was sure that we were on the same page after all, so... I kissed her. And then the rest really _was_ history," Clarke said.

Conversation moved on again, as Octavia demanded stories of what Clarke was like as a little kid, and Anya leaned in towards her and asked in an undertone, "What's his deal?"

"Near as I can figure, he thinks that I took advantage of Clarke when she was emotionally vulnerable," Lexa said. 

"But you—"

"He's only got her side of the story," Lexa said. "It's all right, Anya. I don't need him to know that I was just as much of a mess, if not more so."

"Just let me know if I need to kick his ass," Anya said. 

Lexa laughed softly. "Thanks," she said, and then reached into her pocket to retrieve her phone, which had been insistently buzzing for the last few minutes. She saw that she had missed several text messages, all from the same person.

**MASTER GUSTUS:** I know that you took the night off and I'm sorry to interrupt you, but something came up, and I was wondering if there was any way you could come in? Not for class. Just to talk.

**MASTER GUSTUS:** You haven't done anything wrong. 

**MASTER GUSTUS:** You know I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. 

He was right. She did know that. If he was asking her to come in when he already knew that she (and basically the rest of the adult class, since Anya, Lincoln, and Octavia were also here) had other plans, then it was something that couldn't wait, something she couldn't ignore.

"I gotta go," Lexa said, already texting Master Gustus back to tell him that she would be right there. Never mind the fact that she hadn't come here in her own car. 

"What's wrong?" Clarke asked. 

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "Master Gustus asked me to come in, and I know he wouldn't if it wasn't something that needed to be dealt with right now."

"Take my car," Anya said, handing her the keys. "We'll figure it out."

"I've got space in my car for one," Clarke said.

"And I can take the other," Lincoln added. 

"I'm sorry," Lexa said, as Raven and Anya slid out of the booth to let her out. "I'm glad we got the chance to meet," she said to Wells, because it was close enough to the truth that it didn't violate the rule of not saying things she didn't mean. "I'll see you soon," she added to Clarke. 

"I'll talk to you later," Clarke said, standing up and putting her arms around Lexa. "Let me know that everything's okay."

"I will." She hugged her tight for a second, her lips brushing her cheek before she let her go. "Sorry," she said again, and then she left. It wasn't until she was already pulling away that she realized that she'd just let everyone else to cover her portion of the check. She would have to sort that out later, though. Right now, getting to the dojang was more important.


	133. Clarke

Clarke watched Lexa go until she disappeared out the door, then turned her attention to the people at the table. "I hope everything's all right," she said. "You think it has something to do with Aden?"

"Probably," Octavia said, at the same time that Anya said, "Hopefully not," and Wells asked, "Who's Aden?"

Before Clarke could say anything, Octavia chimed in to answer Wells' question. "Aden's Lexa's son," she said, grinning.

Wells' eyes went wide. "She has a—"

"No," Clarke said sharply. "She doesn't. Octavia just thinks it's funny to call him that."

"In all fairness, I call him your son, too," Octavia said. 

"Why?" Wells asked, his confused frown deepening.

"Because he seriously looks like what would happen if Lexa and Clarke had a kid together," Octavia said. She already had her phone out of her pocket, scrolling through to find a picture of the three of them together. She held it out to show Wells. "I mean, seriously. Even Mama G thinks so."

Wells looked at the picture and his frown eased into a crooked smile. "Okay, yeah, I guess he kind of does," he said. "If that was actually possible. But who is he?"

"He's a kid at their dojang," Clarke said. "Tae Kwon Do school. Lexa is... his mentor, I guess."

"Kind of like a Big Brothers, Big Sisters kind of thing," Lincoln said. "He only came to our school recently, after being at another school where things weren't so great for him. He's a little bit shy, but Master Gustus – our instructor – asked Lexa to look out for him, help him get settled in, and he's started to come out of his shell more and more. He's a good kid, and he loves her."

"His mom is a nurse and she works long shifts, and his father is a truck driver who isn't around much, so sometimes we – she – gives him rides to and from class and stuff," Clarke said, not sure why she was telling Wells all of this. It wasn't really his business, but she felt like she had to explain, like she had to paint Lexa in a good light, and she hated that she felt that way, but still the words came out. "And sometimes she'll just take him out so he's not alone so much. They like to go hunting for Pokemon together."

Wells laughed. "I can't believe how crazy people have gone over that game," he said. "Like... full-grown adults, wandering around catching little pictures on their phone."

"Hey, if it gets kids – and adults – out and exercising, that's a good thing, right?" Lincoln said. "Given the fact that so many people in this country are overweight and don't move around enough. If turning exercise into a video game is what it takes, is that really so bad?"

"I guess not," Wells admitted. 

"Not that Lexa has that problem," Clarke said. "If anything, she exercises too much."

Anya looked at her and smirked. "You're just salty because you end up getting woken up in the morning when she gets up to run when you'd rather she stayed in bed."

Clarke felt herself flush, and everyone else laughed. Everyone except Wells, who looked at her like he wanted to say something, or ask something, but wasn't sure if he could or should. After a moment, he looked away, and the conversation turned to other things for a while as they finished eating, and then asked for the check and for the leftovers to be boxed up.

"I've got it," Clarke said, when Wells tried to pull out his wallet. 

"I can—" he started, but she shook her head.

"I've _got_ it," she repeated. "You're my guest, and it's the least I can do for subjecting you to this bunch of—"

"Misfit toys?" Raven supplied, grinning.

"—misfit toys," Clarke agreed, smiling back, "practically as soon as you arrived."

He looked for a minute like he was going to argue, but then he put his wallet away again. "Thanks," he said.

"Of course." She realized then that someone was going to have to cover for Lexa, too, but then saw that Anya had already put double what her share would be in. Clarke looked up at her, and she nodded slightly, and Clarke nodded back and didn't argue. She figured that Anya would collect it back from Lexa later... or maybe she wouldn't. Clarke honestly wasn't sure where the money that Anya lived on came from, but she seemed to be doing all right, and she wasn't going to make a fuss about it in front of everyone when it was really none of her business.

Once the bill was paid and the leftovers divvied up to those that wanted them, they went back outside. "I think I'm going to go home with Lincoln," Octavia said. "Give you two the place to yourselves to catch up."

"And you can just drop Raven off at home with me," Anya said to Clarke. "If that works for you."

"No problem," Clarke said. 

They said their goodbyes to Lincoln and Octavia, and then got into the car. Conversation was pretty limited on the trip to Anya's place, mostly just discussing how they'd all eaten too much, and then after they'd dropped them off, Wells got into the passenger seat that Raven had vacated for the trip back to her apartment.

"I like your friends," he said. "They seem really nice."

"They're good people," Clarke said. "Kind of... not exactly the group of friends that I thought I would end up with, but I'm glad that I did. Knowing them, talking to them... it's made me think about things that I might not otherwise have thought about. Like... I honestly never realized how good I had it, on so many levels. I've never had to worry about money. I'll graduate without loan debt. I never really thought about how lucky I was to be able-bodied until I met Raven. I never thought about how lucky I was to be white until—"

She stopped as Wells looked at her, his face twisted into a ridiculously bemused expression. "You know that this isn't a suntan I got while I was in England, right?" he joked – or at least she was pretty sure that he was joking. "Because there isn't much sun in England."

Clarke laughed self-consciously. "No, I know," she said. "But... I honestly never really thought about it. And I'm sorry if... if I was ever oblivious about things because of it. If I ever dismissed stuff you were going through because it wasn't part of my experience, or just... didn't notice it," she said. "I feel like I grew up in this little bubble that was big enough for me to not realize that I was living in a bubble... but now it's been popped and I actually have to face something that resembles reality."

Wells nodded. "I had it better than a lot of people," he said. "And I don't remember you ever being completely insensitive. But... yeah, sometimes you didn't really seem to notice when stuff was going down, and sometimes that bothered me. But I never called you on it, either. It's harder for someone to get woke if no one's telling them that they need to wake up."

She frowned, not really sure that that was how things worked, or how they were supposed to work, but she didn't want it to turn into an argument. So she just nodded, and pulled into a parking spot in front of her building. 

They climbed the stairs, and Clarke put the leftovers that she'd taken into the fridge before flopping on the couch. "So," she said, as he sat down on the other end. 

"So," he said back. And then neither of them said anything else for a minute, like they couldn't figure out where to start or maybe they realized that they didn't really have anything to say. Clarke knew what she _wanted_ to talk about, but she didn't want to make things awkward by forcing the conversation in any particular direction. 

Wells finally broke the silence. "She's not what I imagined," he said. "Your girlfriend."

Clarke immediately stiffened, but she tried to force herself to relax. "I sent you a picture of her," she said. "How can she not be what you imagined?"

"Not her appearance," Wells said. "Her personality. She's not... she doesn't seem like the kind of person that you would end up with."

 _End up with._ He made it sound like she'd gotten stuck with Lexa somehow, that she was some kind of leftover or last resort. "How so?" she asked.

"Just... I guess I always figured you would be with someone a little more... alive. Outgoing, I guess. Expressive." Wells shrugged. "Someone a little more like you."

"She's not at her best in groups," Clarke said. "She tends to be more of an observer when there's a lot of people around." Which wasn't entirely true, at least not with the group that had been at dinner that night. But she couldn't really say that to Wells. She couldn't tell him that the reason that Lexa had been more quiet and withdrawn than usual was because he was there, even if it was true. 

"Okay," Wells said, but he looked – and sounded – like he wasn't really buying it. Which irritated Clarke, because she didn't feel like she should have to sell Lexa, or that Lexa should have to sell herself. 

"Why would I want to be with someone who is like me, anyway?" Clarke asked. "She's like me in the ways that matter." Wells just looked at her, and she sat up straighter. "She's smart, and strong, and resilient," she said. "She doesn't take shit from people. When she believes in something, she doesn't back down. She's fierce and loyal, and I know that no matter what happens, she's got my back."

"You don't need someone to fight your fights for you," Wells said. "You're strong enough to—"

"Who's talking about her fighting for me?" Clarke asked. "Just... say whatever you want to say. I really don't feel like talking in circles."

Wells sat up too, and leaned in closer to her, getting the look on his face that he usually reserved for small children and little old ladies that he thought needed his help. "It's just... ever since you first told me about her, how the two of you got together... I guess I've just been a little worried that maybe... she's in it for the wrong reasons?"

Clarke felt her stomach drop, her insides turning to ice. "You're going to have to elaborate on that," she said, "because from where I'm sitting, it sounds kind of like you're saying that she's with me for some other reason than that she loves me." 

"No," Wells said. "I mean, not exactly." He grimaced. "It just... seems like she's got some kind of savior complex? First she and her friends helped Octavia, and then she got involved when you were dealing with Finn, and now there's this kid whose parents aren't around much... It just seems like maybe she's got a thing for... for people who need her."

"Well if she does, then I guess I do, too," Clarke said. "I mean, after all, I want to be a _doctor_. How is that any different?"

"It's different because you won't be sleeping with your patients," Wells said. "It's different because you know where the boundaries are."

Clarke felt her jaw clench, her teeth grinding, and she forced it to relax. "You don't know her," she said, as calmly as she could. "You don't know where she comes from, what she's been through. You've developed this idea about her, and yeah, okay, I can see where you might get it from, but you're not even giving her a chance. You've just drawn this conclusion based on very little evidence, and you're making it sound like, like she some kind of _predator_. And that's not it. That's not it at all."

"It's kind of hard to get to know someone when they barely say anything," Wells said. 

"I already told you, she's not her best in groups. I would offer to set it up so that you could meet her, just the three of us, but I'm not actually sure that I want you to," Clarke said. "Because if you came at her with this bullshit... she'd either just walk away and then I would be torn between the two of you, or she'd tear you a new one, and... I'd still end up torn between the two of you. Except not really, because if you force me into a position where I feel like I have to choose between the two of you, I know who I'll choose. Because she never would."

"I woudn't—" Wells started, but Clarke cut him off.

"You would," she said. "You're doing it right now. You don't think you are, and maybe that's not your intention, but it really feels like you're trying to convince me that the girl that I love doesn't – can't – actually love me back. That she loves my need, not me. But here's the thing, Wells. She needs me, too. She has from the start. And yes, maybe some of that was needing to be needed, for a while. Having someone else's problems to focus on helped her to not obsess over her own. And yeah, she would have beat the shit out of Finn if he'd ever hurt me. She would have done whatever it took to keep that from happening, if she was in a position to do so. But mostly what she did? Was give me perspective on what was happening because I had none, and then stepped back and let me make my own decisions. Let me make my own choices, in my own time. She suggested that I talk to the authorities, but she didn't insist. The first time that she saw me with him, or him with me, she came up and created a scenario that gave me an excuse to get away from him, but if I'd wanted to, I could have just played dumb, or sent her away." Clarke shook her head. "I love her, and part of the reason that I love her is because I love who I am when I'm with her. I love that when I'm with her I feel stronger and more capable than I would on my own. I love that she'll back me up when I need support, and help me figure things out when I can't see the forest for the trees. I love that she'll question me when I'm running headlong into things without thinking them through, and call me on my bullshit when I need to be called out. I love that she can do all of that without ever making me feel small. I never feel like she's judging me." The last words were said rather more pointedly than the rest.

"I'm not judging you, Clarke," Wells said. "I'm just—"

"Questioning my judgment," Clarke finished for him. Whether that was what he was going to say or not, that was what was actually happening. "You think you know me so well, you think you know what's best for me. But you don't actually know me that well anymore. You don't know what I've been through, and how it's changed me. You don't know what she's been through, either, and how it makes it so that we understand each other in ways that I don't think anyone else could. When we're together, we don't feel... alone." Which seemed like a really obvious statement, but it wasn't. Not to Clarke. It was possible to be with someone and still feel alone. She'd felt that way with Finn, even before he'd gone crazy. And if Wells didn't, couldn't understand that... good for him. He was lucky to have never felt that way. "When we're together, we're stronger. Better. We bring out the best in each other. It's not a one-way street. It's not just all about her helping me, fixing me. We don't need to be fixed; we're not broken. Just a little cracked, maybe, but we're each other's gold."

Wells frowned, looking at Clarke like she was _really_ cracked, and losing it, so she explained about _kintsugi_ , the Japanese art of taking broken pottery and filling up the cracks with gold, so that the repaired piece was even more beautiful than it had been before it had been broken. (Which Lexa had told her about in the first place, when she'd been showing her pictures from her time in Japan.)

"She makes me happy," Clarke said. "When I'm with her, I can imagine a whole future. Maybe not the future I thought I was going to have when I was younger, because I think when you're young if you're happy you picture your future as being pretty much like what you grew up with, and if you're unhappy you picture your future as being the opposite. But that's part of growing up, isn't it?"

Wells nodded. "Yeah, it is," he said finally. "I..." He swallowed. "I'd like to get to meet her again," he said finally. "I'd like to give her a chance."

"Good," Clarke said. And then her phone buzzed and she pulled it out of her pocket. She glanced at the screen and frowned, seeing Anya's name. Why would Anya be texting her? She swiped across the screen to read the message and her heart sank. "Shit," she said. "You may get to meet her again sooner than I thought."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm honestly a little nervous about posting this, mainly because of the brief exchange about race; I hope I didn't say anything that upsets anyone, and if I did, please let me know so I can fix it/do better next time.


	134. Lexa

Lexa pulled into the dojang parking lot and parked, heading up to the school. It felt strange to be going in in her street clothes, without her gear bag. She toed off her sandals and tucked them neatly under the little bench. There were no students on the mat; apparently there really _was_ no adult class when they weren't there, or at least not today. But it was summer and attendance tended to be a bit sparse in general. It would pick back up in the fall when everyone went back to school and got back to their normal routine, and when the college students who trained came back. 

She bowed onto the mat and turned the corner to the office. Master Gustus waved her in, and she saw right away that they weren't alone... and her stomach knotted instantly. In the other chair was Aden's mother, who forced a smile when she saw her. 

"Have a seat," her instructor said, his voice surprisingly soft and gentle for a man of his size, and that only made her more nervous. 

"What's going on?" Lexa asked as she sat. "Is everything okay?"

Master Gustus looked at Aden's mother expectantly. She turned and looked at Lexa, and her smile was a little less forced now... but it wasn't a happy smile. It was something else. Determined. Resigned. "Unfortunately, no," she said gently. "We've had some bad news."

"Is Aden okay?" Lexa asked, her eyes flicking back and forth from his mother to her instructor. 

"Aden's fine," his mom reassured her. "He's fine. It's not about him. Or... it is, but indirectly." Her smile flickered, but she managed to keep it in place. "I didn't expect this to be this difficult," she said. "I guess it's good practice for later." 

Lexa didn't know what she was talking about, and whether Ms. Wolfe was talking to Lexa, or to herself. She wished that she would just spit out whatever it was, because right now she was really starting to regret everything she'd eaten for dinner as her stomach churned. 

"I recently had some tests done," she said after a moment. "Just routine tests... but they didn't come back normal."

_No_ , Lexa thought. _No, I don't want to hear this._

"I got the results of the follow-ups today," she continued. "They confirmed that what they found on the test – the mammogram – was – is – cancer."

"No," Lexa said. She didn't mean for the word to actually come out, and she clapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late. 

"Oh sweetie," Ms. Wolfe said, reaching out and putting a hand on Lexa's arm. "I'm sorry. I—"

"No," Lexa said again, but this time to dismiss the apology. "It's... it's all right. Go on." She swallowed her own feelings down, blinking hard to try to ease the stinging in her eyes. 

Ms. Wolfe glanced at Master Gustus, and Lexa saw him nod out of the corner of her eye, so she continued, but she looked even less sure about it now than she had. "The good news is, they caught it early. It's very treatable, and the prognosis is very, very good. As grim as it seems, my doctor told me that as far as these things go, this is sort of a best case scenario. The course of treatment should be fairly short. But it still has side effects; it's still tough on the body."

"Does Aden know?" Lexa asked. 

"Not yet," his mother said. "I'm going to tell him tonight. I just wanted to let the people who are his primary support system besides me know ahead of time, so that if he reaches out, you're not in the dark about what's going on." She smiled, this time tinged with sadness. "I honestly think this might be harder on him than it's going to be on me. I've worked with cancer patients before. I have a good idea what to expect. He doesn't, and... it's going to be scary. Even though the odds are very much in my favor, it can be hard for a child to see their parent sick, or functioning at anything less than 100%, especially when it's got the scary c-word attached to it."

"Okay," Lexa said, because what else was she going to say? "I... thank you for telling me."

"I'd prefer that it wasn't something that was widely known," Ms. Wolfe said, "but I trust your discretion... or I guess I should say, your judgment. I certainly wouldn't expect you to keep it from Clarke."

"Yes ma'am," Lexa said. 

"I'm sorry that I took you away from your evening off," she said. "If it could have waited..." She lifted a hand and let it drop, as if she say, 'What can you do?'

"It's all right," Lexa said. "I'm glad that you told me." She wasn't. Not even a little bit. But she understood, and now that she knew she could be there for Aden if he needed someone. At least she hoped that she could. 

"Are you all right?" Ms. Wolfe asked. "You look pale."

"Fine," Lexa said. "It's just a little bit of a shock."

"I know," she said. "It was for me, too. There's really no history in my family. You go in assuming that everything's going to come back normal, and then when it doesn't..." She shook her head. "I'm just glad that I didn't put it off because of the lack of family history."

Lexa nodded. "Was... was there anything else?"

"No," Master Gustus said. "Thank you for coming in."

"And thank you for everything that you do for Aden," Ms. Wolfe said. 

"Of course," Lexa said. "It's not a big deal."

"It is, though," Ms. Wolfe said. "I was so glad to see him excited about going to class again, and that's in no small part because of you. So thank you."

"It's—" Lexa started, but stopped herself. "You're welcome," she said. She pushed herself up out of the chair and took a step, and her legs felt like Jell-O, like she'd just finished a long workout of all kicking, rather than just sitting in a chair for a few minutes. 

"Are you sure you're all right?" Ms. Wolfe asked as she wobbled, the nurse in her kicking in probably. "Maybe you'd better sit down again. Just take a minute."

Lexa didn't want to sit down. She wanted to get out of her, to get as far away from this conversation and everything that it stirred up as possible. "I'm fine," she said. "Really. I appreciate your concern, but really... I'm okay."

"I think you should sit down," Master Gustus said. "You really do look pale, and I'd rather you didn't pass out on the mats."

"I'm not going to pass out," Lexa said, but the world really kind of was swimming, and so after another second where she couldn't get the signal from her brain to her legs to move, she sat down again. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just..."

She looked first at Ms. Wolfe, then at Master Gustus, and finally she decided that maybe it would be better if they knew. In case somehow she screwed things up with Aden because she couldn't put her own shit aside to be there for him. 

"My mother died when I was eight," she said softly, looking at the edge of the desk because she didn't want to see their faces, didn't want their pity. "Of cancer. Not breast cancer. It... they caught it late. Too late. She didn't go through chemo or anything. The odds..." She cleared her throat, shrugged. "She went from home to hospice to... gone, all in a few months. I didn't even know until the end. They didn't tell me. They... when..." She stopped, unable to force the words out, and now wasn't the time or the place for it anyway. 

"Oh honey," Ms. Wolfe said, reaching out and touching her again, and Lexa forced herself to stay still, to not pull away. "I'm so sorry."

"It was a long time ago," Lexa managed, and forced herself to look up. "I just thought... you should know. I'll do what I can. If he comes to me. I'll do my best. I know that, that this is different. That you're going—that you should be okay. I'll do my best."

"If it's too much—" Ms. Wolfe started, but Lexa shook her head sharply. 

"No. If he needs me, I'll be there."

"I'm sorry to put you through this," she said.

"You're not putting me through anything," Lexa said. "You're the one who's going to be going through it. I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. It's not... you're not asking anything that I'm not willing to give. I just thought you should know, because... it might be I won't always be able to be completely... detached. But I'll do my best to be strong for him. If he needs it." _Make it about him. Not you. It's not about you._ "And if you need—if he needs a ride or anything, just tell me. If you're not feeling up to it... I can't promise I'll always be able to, but I'll do as much as I can." 

She could feel Master Gustus' eyes boring into her from the side, and she wished that he would look away. She wished that she could take it all back, that she'd never let the mask slip in the first place. But she couldn't. It was out there, her scars exposed to the world once again, and she was tired of being turned inside out. 

"Thank you," Ms. Wolfe said finally. "You have no idea how much it means to me to have you looking out for him."

"He's a good kid," Lexa said. 

"Yes," she said. "He is."

Lexa looked at Master Gustus then. "Was there anything else?" she asked again, not to be rude but because it felt like the walls were closing in and she needed to get up, needed to breathe air that didn't feel like it had already been breathed before. 

"No," he said. "That was all."

"I'll see you Tu—" She stopped herself. Today was Friday. There was class tomorrow morning. "Tomorrow," she said. 

"Have a good night," he said. 

She stood up, this time forcing herself to be still, to remain steady, because she was afraid if she didn't they would keep her here longer, and she couldn't. She needed to go. For a second she thought that Aden's mother might get up and try to hug her, but thankfully she didn't, because it would have been awkward at best, and ugly at worst, because she wasn't sure that she could actually keep from shattering if anyone touched her. She left the office, shoving her feet back into her sandals before pushing open the door and stepping out, gulping the outside air even though it was thick with humidity. 

She stumbled down to her car – Anya's car – and slid into the driver's seat, putting the key in the ignition and twisting. She didn't let herself think, just pulled out of the parking lot and drove, heading home because they would probably be done with dinner by now, and if they weren't, she wasn't really in any shape to go back to join the party. She parked and then sat there, her head resting against the steering wheel for a moment. 

She couldn't tell if anyone was actually inside; there were no lights on but it was still light enough out that they weren't really necessary. Maybe they weren't done with dinner after all. It had felt like the conversation had lasted an eternity, but when she actually looked at the clock, it had been less than half an hour since she'd left the restaurant. 

There was only one way to find out, but it took another few minutes before she actually managed to force herself out of the car. She unlocked the front door and trudged up the stairs, and there was too much gravity pressing down on her, and she very nearly fell as she removed her sandals.

She fumbled with her keys, and before she could manage to get the right one in the door, Anya opened it. "Hey," she said, stepping aside to let her in. 

"Hey." Lexa registered that Raven was there, and she tried to lift a hand in greeting but it ended up looking more like she was trying to push her away (even though she was all the way across the room).

" _Wie geht's?_ " Anya asked. 

" _Nichts,_ " Lexa replied, which was the wrong answer. Anya had asked her how she was, and she'd answered 'nothing'. And she wasn't nothing. She wished she could be nothing, or at least feel nothing, but she wasn't, and she couldn't. The pain she'd never dealt with, had never been allowed to deal with, throbbed inside of her, growing until it filled every inch of her and threatened to split her open. 

" _Was kann ich tun?_ "

Lexa looked at her and shook her head. There was nothing Anya could do. There was nothing anyone could do. " _Ich will nur für eine Weile allein sein._ "

For a minute she thought that Anya would argue with her, that she would tell her that she shouldn't be alone, that she needed to talk about it, needed to get it – whatever it was – out. But then Anya just nodded. "If you need anything..."

Lexa nodded and retreated to her room. She could hear voices even before her door was fully shut, and she wondered if they were talking about her, or if they were just picking up whatever conversation they'd been having before she came back, or maybe Raven was telling Anya that it was rude to have conversations in front of people in languages that they couldn't understand, which it was, but Lexa knew that Anya had done it to give her a safe space to talk even though they weren't alone. 

She laid down, pulling her knees up to her chest, and tried to focus on just breathing, on trying to make her mind still and blank, calm as a placid pond, but it was impossible. She tried then to think about Aden instead, how this might affect him, how he would feel when he found out his mother was sick (at least his mother was telling him...) and whether he would actually come to her. Part of her hoped that he wouldn't, because what could she say? What kind of reassurance could she offer? 

She was going to let him down. Him, and his mother and Master Gustus. They were all counting on her, and she was going to let them all down. 

Her phone began to buzz, and she looked at the screen. Clarke. She thought about not answering, but if Clarke was with Wells right now, she wouldn't be calling unless it was important, right? She finally, just before it went to voice mail, she swiped her finger across the screen to take the call. "Hello?"

"Hey," Clarke said. "Everything all right?"

Lexa thought about lying. For a split second, she really thought about lying. But she couldn't do that to Clarke. She wouldn't. So she told the truth. "No," she said. "But hopefully it will be."


	135. Clarke

"No," Lexa said, "but hopefully it will be."

The words sent a chill down Clarke's spine, and her fingers tightened around her phone. "What do you mean?" she asked, trying to fight back the wave of panic that was rising in her, swallowing back the taste of metal that was actually adrenaline being dumped into her system. "Lexa."

Clarke told herself that she was being irrational, that it was just because Wells was here, or more specifically because of the conversation that they'd just had, her heightened emotional state, that she was reading way too much into those few words. 

"I'm..." Lexa started, then stopped. "It's nothing that can't wait," she said. "Don't—just enjoy the time that you have with Wells."

Clarke snorted. She didn't mean to, it just came out. "How can I enjoy anything when I know that you're upset?" she asked. "When I know that you're not okay, but you hope at some point in the future you will be?"

Lexa was quiet on the other end, but Clarke could still hear her breathing so she knew that she hadn't been disconnected. "I just got some bad news. I'm trying to process it."

"Is it about the dojang?" Clarke asked. She knew that the Tae Kwon Do school was sort of a second home for Lexa, and if anything was happening with that, it would affect her deeply. If she lost it...

"No," Lexa said.

"Master Gustus?" Who was sort of a father figure to Lexa, which she sorely needed considering how absent her actual father was, and how much of an asshole he had a tendency to be when he _was_ around. 

"No," Lexa said again. 

Clarke frowned, letting her pacing (which she'd gotten up and started doing without even really realizing she was doing it) take her down the hall. She stepped into her room, and although she didn't close the door all the way because she didn't want Wells to feel like she was shutting him out... that was kind of exactly what she was doing. She flopped down on her bed. "I wish I was with you," she said softly. "I wish I was there to help."

A pause that stretched the span of several breaths, and then, "I wish you were, too." So soft Clarke could barely hear her, and her heart ached at the longing in the whisper, at the need. 

And she decided that that mattered more than anything else right now. More than Wells, who was maybe her oldest friend but he wasn't the center of her world anymore. "I'll come," she said. "I'll be there. Just give me a few minutes."

"No," Lexa said. "Wells. You have Wells there. It wouldn't be fair to him to—"

"Screw fair," Clarke said. "He'll be fine on his own for a night."

"No," Lexa said again. "Clarke, I'll be all right."

"Maybe," Clarke said. Lexa was tough, and if she said she would get through something, she would get through it, but that didn't change the fact that she shouldn't have to go through it alone. Anya was there with her, probably, unless she and Raven had decided to go back out, but it wasn't the same. Just like it wasn't the same for her having Octavia or Raven around when she really wanted to be with, to confide in, Lexa. "But you shouldn't have to figure out how to be by yourself."

She heard Lexa's breath hitch, and then she sighed. "Maybe I should come there," she said. "So at least Wells isn't left in your apartment alone."

Clarke considered, then nodded... and realized Lexa couldn't hear a nod. "Okay," she said. "Are you okay to drive?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "I'm okay enough for that."

"I'll be waiting, then."

"Thank you," Lexa said, and hung up. 

Clarke went back out into the living room, where Wells was still sitting on the couch, his eyebrows drawn together and the corner of his lips turned down in a frown of concern. "Everything okay?" he asked.

"No," she said, sitting down next to him and tipping her head onto his shoulder like she'd done so many times in the past. She closed her eyes and felt his arm slide around her shoulders, hugging her against his side. It didn't feel the way it used to, but it felt enough like it that her jangled nerves started to settle. "Lexa got some bad news," she said. "She was trying to tough it out on her own, but whatever it was – is – has her pretty shaken up. She's coming over."

"Okay," Wells said, and Clarke could feel his breath on her hair. "Should I get out of the way?"

"No," Clarke said. "That's why she's coming here, so you're not stuck on your own. We just might need a little while alone in my room."

"Okay," he repeated. "I'm sorry that things haven't gone... the way I hoped they would. I'm sorry if I upset you earlier, about her."

"I know you're just concerned," Clarke said, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. "But I really think that once you get a chance to get to know her a little, you'll understand better."

"Okay," Wells said for a third time. "I said I was willing to give her a chance, and I meant it."

"I know," Clarke said. "Thank you."

Wells nodded, and they stayed like that, with her head on his shoulder and his arm around hers, his cheek resting against the top of her head, until her phone chimed to tell her she had a text message from Lexa, telling her that she was downstairs. Clarke pushed the buzzer to open the front door and then started down the stairs, meeting Lexa halfway and turning back around to head back up. She'd reached for Lexa's hand but Lexa had either not noticed or chosen not to take it, and the tension was thick as they entered the apartment and Wells turned to look at them – or really at Lexa.

"I'm sorry," Lexa said. "I don't mean to cut into the time you two have."

"Don't worry about it," Wells said. "We've still got the rest of the weekend. I'm sorry... you've got whatever you've got going on going on." His face wrinkled at the awkward phrasing, but Clarke saw the faintest hint of a smile on Lexa's face. "You two do what you need to do. I've got some Netflix I need to catch up on. The UK version doesn't get everything you do here." He smiled, warmly enough that Clarke actually believed he meant it. And he probably did, because he was Wells.

"Thank you," Lexa said. Clarke put her hand on the small of her back, and Lexa glanced at her, then went down the hall to her room. She just stood there as Clarke shut the door, considering locking it and then realizing how ridiculous that was. Wells wasn't going to try to barge in on them. So she left it as it was and moved to Lexa, holding out her arms and letting her choose whether to accept or reject the offer.

She could practically see Lexa thinking it through, trying to decide whether she should let herself be held, or whether she needed not to in order to keep herself together. In the end she must have decided the latter, because she went over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it instead. Clarke followed, sitting beside her, and something inside of her eased a little when Lexa turned up her hand, lacing their fingers together when Clarke took it. 

"What happened?" Clarke asked. "What... what did Master Gustus need to talk to you about?"

Lexa pressed her lips together, staring down at nothing in particular for a moment, and when she looked back up at Clarke, her eyes were bright and filled with unshed tears. "Aden's mother has cancer," she said. "She just found out. She hasn't even told him yet, but she wanted Master Gustus and I to know in case... in case he needs us."

"Oh," Clarke said, and then, " _Oh,_ " as it struck her that this wasn't entirely, or maybe not even mostly, about Aden and his mother. This was about Lexa and _her_ mother, about the loss she'd never dealt with, the mourning she'd never been allowed to do. Which seemed to be a refrain in her life, a recurring theme, and that was so fucked up, and if Lexa tried to make herself cold and distant, detached from any sort of human emotion, was that really all that surprising? "Oh Lexa..."

"It's... they caught it really early. It's very treatable, and the odds are good that she'll have a complete recovery, and—" Clarke could see Lexa's throat working as she tried to swallow down whatever she was feeling. "She should be fine. And I'm sure that she'll be able to explain it all to Aden so that he knows that. He's a smart kid. And she's telling him. At least she's telling him."

Clarke's head swam, trying to remember what she knew about what had happened with Lexa's mother, what Lexa had told her. Not much. Mostly she'd talked about what happened after: being taken from the only home she'd ever known and being left with her grandparents, who from everything Lexa had said hadn't actually really wanted her, and her father coming back half a year later and taking her away to another country, and never talking about her mother, ever. 

"They didn't tell me," Lexa said. "Maybe they thought it was better that way. Maybe..." She squeezed Clarke's hand, and Clarke squeezed back. "It all happened so quickly. I guess I noticed that my mom was tired a lot, but it didn't really... I didn't really think much of it. I think I remember being annoyed with her when she didn't have to energy to take me to the beach or wherever I wanted to go. Then she was in the hospital – except it was actually hospice, but they didn't tell me there was a difference, or if they did it didn't really register – and then she was gone. Dead. The last time I saw her... and I only saw her a few times, and I don't know... I don't know if that was her decision or my dad's or both... but the last time I saw her, I didn't even know it was going to be the last time. I didn't even say goodbye. Not... not a real goodbye. Not a forever goodbye. I just said goodbye like I would see her the next day, or in a few days. I guess I probably hugged her, maybe I said I love you... but I don't remember. I don't remember if I even said that I loved her. And then the next day my dad told me that she had died, and that I needed to pack my stuff."

"He didn't even wait until after the funeral?" Clarke asked. 

"There was no funeral," Lexa said. "She was cremated."

"But... there wasn't even a memorial service or anything?"

"If there was, it happened without us. Or without me." Lexa seemed to shrink in on herself. "He went back after, to pack up the rest of our things, donate them or put them in storage or ship them to my grandparents. I got to pack a suitcase and a backpack, and that was all. My entire life in two bags, a really, really long flight, and my entire world, the only life I'd ever known, gone. From Hawaii to the Midwest, from sunshine to cornfields..." She shook her head. "I never got to say goodbye to my teachers or my friends. I never got to say goodbye to the beach, which sounds silly but it didn't feel silly. It _doesn't_ feel silly. In Australia, before I left, I went down to the beach. I went surfing one last time and I said goodbye. I have a little bottle of sand somewhere from the beach where I went most often. I have some part of everywhere I've lived... except Hawaii. Because I didn't get to say goodbye to Hawaii."

"Oh Lexa..." Clarke let go of her hand, but only so that she could wrap her arms around her, and for the briefest second Lexa tensed like she might pull away, and then she seemed to melt. It took a minute for Clarke to realize that she was actually falling over intentionally, and she went with her, rearranging herself so that she was half on top of Lexa, looking down at her. "If I could—" she started, but she didn't finish. If she could, she would take Lexa back to Hawaii right now. If she could, they would go to the airport and get on a plane, go back to the first home that Lexa had ever had and the only one she really seemed to miss. She would give her a second chance to say goodbye, if she could.

"I know," Lexa said, sliding her fingers into Clarke's hair and drawing her down into a kiss. It wasn't a gentle kiss, but it wasn't rough, either. It was the sort of kiss that happened when you loved someone so much, and needed them so much, and _wanted_ them so much, that you forgot about holding back. It was a hungry kiss, a demanding kiss, and part of Clarke wanted to pull back, to try and soothe Lexa still, but another part realized that that's what Lexa was asking for, only in a different form. And she was aware of Wells only a few steps away down the hall, but she could also hear that he'd turned on the TV, and they could be quiet if they had to be...

She pulled away enough to look down at Lexa, to catch her gaze and hold it, for everything to go still for just a second, and she saw Lexa's lips half-form a word that was clear even without sound: _Please..._

Please what, Clarke didn't know. Not exactly. Not entirely. But she realized she didn't need to. All she needed to know was that this was what Lexa needed right now. Not to talk more, not to try to put it all into words that could be neatly packaged and put on a shelf. This was the form of comfort that she wanted, or that she was able to accept, and to insist on trying to ease her pain in any other way would likely end up doing exactly the opposite.

So Clarke surrendered to the demand of Lexa's lips and the pull of her fingers, gave in to the throb of the pulse beneath her skin that rose as Lexa's teeth grazed her throat. She gave in, and in the giving felt something in Lexa give, too... give way, break open, and all of the hurt flowed out, and Clarke felt for a second like she was drowning in it, until she realized that she didn't have to try to hold it, that if Lexa could let it go then so could she. This wasn't one of those times where she had to keep hold of the pieces until they could be put back together. This was something else, something new...

... and when it was over, when the storm had passed and she looked in Lexa's eyes again and found them clear, found her smiling in that soft gentle way that she was pretty sure was almost exclusive to moments like this when it was just the two of them and there was not even the space of a breath between them, everything felt somehow different, somehow... more. She didn't know where she ended and Lexa began, and they were two separate people, two sometimes very different people... but here, now, together... they were whole.


	136. Lexa

Lexa felt Clarke's fingers combing through her hair, her thumb stroking her temple, and she opened her eyes to look at her, her lips curving into a smile even before she came into focus. The smile tugged wider as Clarke's lips met hers, soft, once, and then again, and Lexa flattened one palm against the small of her back, her other hand coming up so that her fingers loosely circled Clarke's wrist. 

"As much as I would love to just stay like this, to let you sleep," Clarke said, "I don't think it's a good idea."

Had she been sleeping? Maybe, a little... or maybe she'd just been drifting, soaking in the warmth of Clarke like she was the sun and this bed was the beach and the mixed sounds of their breathing was the tide going in and out.

"I think it's a wonderful idea," Lexa said. 

"It's too early," Clarke said. "If you sleep now, you'll wake up in the middle of the night and won't be able to go back to sleep."

It was only then that Lexa registered that the twilight cast of the room wasn't because the bathroom light was on and leaking into the room... it was because it wasn't even fully dark outside yet. She turned her head to glance at the clock on the nightstand (who still had a clock on the nightstand?) and saw that Clarke was right. It wasn't even eight o'clock. 

It felt like it should be so much later...

"Oh," she said, and sighed. "Should I go?" She made no move to do so, though, in part because Clarke was laying half on top of her, but also because she didn't want to. She didn't want to leave; she didn't want this moment, this _feeling_ , to end, because right now, despite everything, she felt calm. At peace. _Whole._ She didn't want to lose that.

"No," Clarke said, "but we should get up. Maybe make some popcorn, see what Wells is watching."

"Are you sure?" Lexa asked, trying not to let doubt edge in. "You don't have that much time with him. I don't want to—"

Clarke's finger rested against her lips, just for a second. "You're not," she said. "Stay. I want you two to know each other." 

Lexa sensed maybe there was a little more to it than the light tone of Clarke's voice might indicate, but she wasn't going to pry. So she just nodded, and then waited for Clarke to actually make the first move toward getting up. It took a few minutes, but finally she did, and Lexa followed her, finding her discarded clothes and starting to put them back on, but Clarke slid her arms around her, pressing a set of pajamas against her chest, so she put those on instead, then ducked into the bathroom to fix her mussed hair. 

When they were presentable again they emerged and went back down the short hall to the living room, where Wells was sprawled in one of the chairs in an obviously well-loved t-shirt and a pair of basketball shorts. "Great minds think alike," he said, grinning and gesturing at their pajamas. "Pants are overrated."

Clarke laughed. "Pantsless o'clock," she said. "Popcorn?"

"Extra salt, no butter," he said. 

"Sorry, it's microwave stuff," Clarke said. "I don't have the popcorn pot here."

"Okay... I guess..." Wells said, in the voice that people always used to indicate that they were agreeing only under duress... but not really. 

"You'll live, you big baby," Clarke said. "Did I ever tell you that Wells once went through a phase where he refused to eat anything with ingredients that he couldn't pronounce?" 

Lexa shook her head.

Wells laughed. "It didn't last long, because the next thing I knew, Smartass over there started putting labels on everything, breaking them down to their component chemicals, pretty much, so that I couldn't pronounce what was in _anything_."

Lexa couldn't help smiling back at him. "That sounds about right," she said. "You should do that in our kitchen." Her smile faltered. "Mine and Anya's, I mean," she corrected. 

"No thanks," Clarke said. "I like all of my limbs intact, thank you very much."

"Anya would never hurt you," Lexa said. 

"Not over some labels," Clarke said. "If I hurt you, though..."

Lexa shook her head. "She still wouldn't. I wouldn't let her."

Clarke looked at her and smiled, but it was tight. "I don't plan to ever find out," she said softly, but not softly enough that it was likely that Wells hadn't also heard. Lexa just nodded, not sure how to respond, and went into the kitchen to get out the bowls to dump the popcorn in. 

"Do you need anything to drink?" she asked Wells. 

"I already got some water, but thanks," he said. There was a pause, a silence that stretched a little too long, and Lexa suspected he was searching for something to say to fill it before it could get completely awkward. "So... I'm sorry if you already said this at dinner, but trying to keep track of all of the details of so many people, I either didn't hear or forgot. What are you in school for?" 

"Law," Lexa said. "I was in international relations but last semester I decided to switch. Which puts me behind and likely to graduate a year late, but..." She shrugged. 

"Why the switch?" Wells asked. "If you don't mind my asking?"

"I don't mind," Lexa said, and she didn't. "I don't know that there's—" She stopped herself, trying not to frown, and felt Clarke's hand rest on the small of her back gently, like she wanted her to know that she (literally) had her back. "It's sort of complicated," she said. 

"You don't have to—" Wells started, but Lexa stopped him.

"No," she said. "It's all right." She was momentarily distracted by the beeping of the microwave, and she watched as Clarke took out the bag and carefully opened it, dumping it into one of the bowls. Lexa took it and brought it over to Wells, then sat down on the couch. "My father is a lawyer," she said. "And he and I... our relationship is rough. Pretty much always has been. So I swore that I would never do what he did. I would never follow in his footsteps. Partially out of spite, and partially because I just... I didn't always support what he had to do. I didn't always think that when he was defending people, that they deserved to be defended."

"Oh," Wells said. "So he's a defense lawyer?"

"He's a JAG," Lexa said. "Judge Advocate General for the Air Force. So yes, sometimes he's doing defense for service members. Not always, but sometimes."

"Oh," Wells said again, his eyebrows going up. "That sounds... intense."

"It is," Lexa said, "or he is. His job was – is – his life."

"Was there a specific case that made you change your mind, or...?" Wells asked. "I don't mean to pry, and maybe you can't—"

Lexa stopped him again. She didn't know why she wanted to explain this to him, but she did. Maybe it was because she knew from what Clarke had said that he wasn't sure about their relationship, that he felt that Lexa might be using her somehow, or taking advantage of her. Even though she usually didn't care what people thought about her, and she wasn't going to try to be anyone but herself to win him over... it would be nice if Clarke didn't have to feel torn between the two of them (if she did). "It was actually a case that didn't happen," she said. 

The microwave beeped again, and Lexa paused as Clarke dumped more popcorn into a bowl and came over to sit beside her, close enough that their hips and knees pressed, and Lexa was grateful for the contact. It helped steady her, kept her calm even as she picked at yet another scar and felt it bleed anew. But maybe it was good. Maybe it was what she needed, just to get it all out all at once. Maybe to let the light in, you had to let the darkness out. "Last summer," she said, "my girlfriend was killed. Hit by a drunk driver. She was a pedestrian, and he was driving too fast and not paying attention." She felt Clarke's hand beside hers, one finger tracing lightly over her skin, and she let out a breath. "Her parents didn't press charges. If they had, it was possible that my father would have had to defend the guy, because he was an airman. I couldn't..." Lexa swallowed. "If he had, I don't think I ever could have forgiven him."

"Wouldn't that have been a conflict of interest, though?" Wells asked. "Can't you – what's the word? recuse? yourself if you're somehow connected to the case, and you couldn't be objective?"

"I'm sure he could have," Lexa said. "But he wouldn't have. He wouldn't have seen it as a conflict of interest." She didn't actually know that for a fact, and they'd never gotten to the point where they had to find out. "It just... it made me think that, that people have the ability to do good in the world, and they have the ability to perpetuate evil. And yes, you can do good in just about any job, but just knowing that... if her parents had decided to press charges, and they had had their lawyer go up against my father... they might have lost. Even though he'd done it. There was no defense. They might still have lost. Because my dad is good. And I couldn't let that possibility stand. If he's good, I have to be better. I have to counteract it. It just felt – feels – like the right thing to do."

"So you want to be a prosecutor?"

Lexa frowned slightly. "I don't know," she said. "I haven't figured that out yet."

"Well, you've still got time, right?" Wells said. 

"Yes," Lexa said. "I know why I want to do what I want to do, and prosecution is definitely an option for righting wrongs in the world... but then there's also the possibility of successfully arguing a case and being wrong, and that makes me a little bit queasy." She forced a smile. "The other thing that I'm strongly considering is being a civil rights attorney."

"So like the ACLU?"

"Exactly, or other organizations like it."

"You would be good at that," Clarke said. "Really good."

Lexa felt her cheeks flush as she looked over at Clarke. "Thank you," she said. 

"Obviously I don't know you well," Wells said, "but from everything that Clarke has said about you, and just... knowing the kind of person that she would love as much as she loves you... I think whatever you decide to do, you'll be amazing at."

Now she was _really_ blushing, but she forced herself to keep eye contact with him. "Thank you," she said again. 

He just smiled at her. "And hey, at least in America you won't have to wear a silly wig."

"What?" Clarke asked. 

"You know the wigs that people used to wear, like, back around the Revolutionary War?" Wells asked. "The white ones with the curls on the sides and the little pigtail in the back?"

"Yeah...?" Clarke said.

"In England lawyers – barristers – still wear them in court."

" _What?_ " Clarke squawked. "You've got to be joking."

"Nope." Wells tapped at his phone, and a second later handed it over, showing them a picture. "So be glad you didn't decide to study in England," he said. 

"I am," Lexa said, laughing as she looked at the picture. "I definitely am." She handed the phone back to him. "What about you? What are you studying?" Like he'd said, it was hard to keep track of the details for a whole bunch of different people, and even though she already knew everyone else, if he'd said what he was studying, she hadn't retained the information. 

"Urban Planning," Wells said. "Basically figuring out better ways for people to live together, better ways for society to function. Obviously you can't change the world all at once, but if we can improve the infrastructure, we can improve life for everyone. I'm also interested in figuring out ways to green our cities, reestablish nature and habitat that's been disrupted or destroyed."

"I'm surrounded by crusaders," Clarke said. "Did Octavia tell you about her plans to start a whole farm for troubled kids?" 

"No," Wells said, and Lexa leaned back and listened as Clarke explained the idea that Octavia had had, and how all of them would be tied into it somehow (although Lexa still wasn't 100% sure of how she actually fit in) and how it sounded good in theory but who knew if they could ever make it work in practice. 

"Are you thinking about it?" Wells asked when she was done. "It sounds like you might be."

Clarke leaned in against her, and Lexa wrapped her arm around her, turning her head to press a kiss to her hair without thinking. They'd talked about it a little, but she didn't think that Clarke had ever really reached any conclusions about what she wanted to do for the future. "I am," Clarke said. "I keep thinking, 'I want to be a doctor. I've always wanted to be a doctor.' But then I wonder if that's really what I've always wanted to be, or if I just decided that because my mom is a doctor, and so I just sort of assumed that I would follow in her footsteps." She took Lexa's free hand and cradled it in one of her own, the other tracing the lines of the bones and veins. "I like medicine," she said. "I'm fascinated by the human body. I want to help people. I want to _heal_ people. But is becoming a doctor the only way to do that?" 

Neither of them said anything, assuming the question was rhetorical. They just waited for Clarke to continue, and after a minute she did. "When Octavia brought it up, it wasn't actually the first time," she said. "A while back, Raven was having problems with her leg, and I helped massage out the knots in the muscles, and she said then that if I ever decided that I didn't want to be in school for a million years, I should consider becoming a physical therapist. She thought I would be good at it. So I've been thinking about it, and looking into it a little bit, and I've started to wonder if maybe she's right. I feel like it might fill that desire that I have to help people get better, without spending years and years and years in school before I can actually _do_ anything." She shrugged slightly. "And I can finish my undergrad in pre-med and then go on to become a physical therapist, and if I ever change my mind, I can always go back and do med school," she said. "I'm sure I wouldn't be the first person to make that kind of a switch."

"I'm sure you wouldn't," Wells said. "Have you talked to your mom about it at all?"

"No," Clarke said. "She's got a lot going on, and I didn't really want to bring it up until I was sure that I was even seriously considering it."

"But you are now?" Wells asked.

"Yeah," Clarke said. "I think I am." She pressed closer to Lexa, and Lexa pulled her hand away gently so that she could wrap her arms around Clarke, squeezing her tight for a moment. 

"I know you'll be awesome at whatever you decide to do, too," Wells said. 

"Thanks," Clarks said. "We should probably eat this popcorn before it gets cold. There's nothing grosser than cold popcorn."

"There are plenty of things grosser than cold popcorn," Lexa said lightly, "if you watch the right shows on the Food Network." 

Clarke laughed. "Okay, fair enough," she said. "But still."

"You want to keep watching this, or do you want to change to something else?" Wells asked, gesturing to the screen. Lexa didn't even really pay attention to what it was showing; she just nodded when Clarke said that it was fine, and leaned back as he pressed play, arranging herself so that Clarke could lean back against her comfortably. She rubbed her cheek against Clarke's bright blonde hair and kissed her head again, and Clarke tipped her face up to smile at her, a question in her eyes like she wanted to make sure that Lexa was all right.

Lexa smiled back at her, because she was. Somehow, despite everything... she was. Which felt like a minor miracle, but then so many things had since Clarke's appearance in her life. It didn't mean that it wouldn't all hit her later, that she wouldn't find herself hurting again at some point in the (probably not so distant) future... but maybe, somehow, finally... she was actually starting to heal. 

"Thank you," she whispered, her lips just behind Clarke's ear. 

Clarke turned her head again. "For what?"

"For being you," Lexa said. 

Clarke smiled. "You too," she said, and then even more softly, "I love you." 

Lexa held her tighter, knowing she didn't have to say the words for Clarke to hear them, but when the lump in her throat had subsided a little, she whispered back, "I love you too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know all of the ins and outs of the civil vs. military legal system, but from what I was able to find, if Costia's parents had decided to press charges, it could have been tried in either or both courts... so potentially Lexa's father could have become involved. As always, though, all errors are mine.


	137. Clarke

For what was probably only the second time ever, Clarke woke up before Lexa, and she moved very carefully to extricate herself from the tangle of their limbs without waking her, retrieving the sketchpad from her nightstand, glad that her drawing pencil was still tucked into the spiral at the top. She propped herself up against the headboard with her pillows and began to draw, roughing in the lines of Lexa's body and the blanket that only partially covered her, then began to shade in her curves and the loose waves and curls of her hair, finally etching the black marks down her spine and circling her upper arm, trying to recreate her tattoos as accurately as possible.

She was just putting the last touches on the sketch when Lexa finally stirred, rolling over and blinking at her in the morning light that streamed in through the window. For a second she seemed completely confused, like she wasn't sure she was in the right place or with the right person, because usually it was Clarke who woke up to find Lexa watching her, a soft smile curving her lips. 

"Good morning, Clarke," she said, her voice just slightly hoarse. 

"Good morning, Lexa," Clarke said, setting aside the sketchbook so she could lean in and kiss her. "How are you?"

"Okay," Lexa said, sounding slightly surprised. "I'm okay."

"I'm glad," Clarke said, and meant it. Not that she wasn't willing to give Lexa as much support as she needed (or as much as Clarke was able to provide to her) for as long as she needed, but because she didn't like to see anyone, but especially not Lexa, suffering. So to hear her say that she was okay, and really sound like she meant it, eased something inside of her. "Any plans for today?"

"I have to go to class this morning," Lexa said, "since I didn't go last night, and also..." Her voice trailed off, and Clarke could sense the shift in her, the okay-ness ebbing away as she realized that even if she had found some measure of peace within herself about her own mother's death, she had still been put in the position of having to deal with a 13-year-old boy who had just been forced into the position of having to face his own mother's mortality. Even if she was fine, even if she got through treatment and everything went as smoothly as possible, it didn't change the fact that he would have to think about the fact that there was a chance, however slim, that she might not make it.

"Aden," Clarke said softly, and Lexa nodded. She slid down so that she could wrap her arms around Lexa, smoothing back her hair and kissing her again, feeling the soft press and brush of skin on skin, and the warmth that that brought up in her belly, but she didn't push for anything, just waited to see what Lexa wanted. 

The slightly desperate intensity of the night before was absent, but there was still an edge of _need_ in their lovemaking, a grip of fingers and a press of lips that went beyond simple desire to something more, something deeper, and Clarke wasn't complaining because it seemed that what Lexa wanted most was to leave her completely undone and unable to think. 

She's not sure how much time passed before she blinked herself out of a half doze because she heard Wells walking around, going into the bathroom and closing the door behind him, and coming out again a few minutes later. "We should get up," she said, tracing her fingers along Lexa's spine. "Eat something before you have to go to class."

"Mm," Lexa said, which doesn't seem to be either agreement or disagreement. She lifted her head from where it was pillowed on Clarke's shoulder and pressed a kiss over her heart. "I should have asked if you have plans for the day."

"Just hanging out with Wells," she said. "Probably showing him around the city some, seeing whatever catches our interest." 

"Being a tourist?" Lexa teased. 

"Pretty much," Clarke said. "The funny thing is that I'd never really been here before I started school, and then once I started school it was just classes and homework and getting to know people and I honestly haven't seen that much of the city myself. So it could be fun."

"I saw a lot of stuff with Costia," Lexa said. "She was determined to get to know as much of the city as she could, as quickly as she could, and a lot of the time I got taken along for the ride." She smiled. "She always acted as if she was the expert about things, when sometimes she had no clue. Which was sometimes hilarious and sometimes frustrating as hell... depending on how seriously she was taking herself. Because sometimes she would be trying to play tour guide and realize that she honestly had no clue, and so she would just start making stuff up just to make me laugh." 

Clarke smiled back, glad that it seemed to be getting easier for Lexa to talk about Costia, but at the same time feeling a little bit awkward talking about her when they were still naked and twined together, a little drowsy-drunk in the afterglow. "You could come be our tour guide," she said. "I wouldn't mind if you made stuff up."

"I don't know if I can," Lexa said, her smile slipping. "Even before all of this, I had already made plans to hang out with Aden this afternoon, since his mother was supposed to be working, and I assumed you would be busy. I don't know if that's changed, though, with everything. But don't you want time to catch up with Wells on your own?"

Clarke's forehead furrowed as she realized that no, she kind of didn't. She wanted to have fun, and she was afraid that if it was just the two of them, somehow things would get too heavy, that they would end up having conversations that she didn't want to be having. Yes, she wanted to reconnect with Wells, but that didn't mean that she wanted to open up the closet and dig out all of the skeletons to be examined in the broad light of day any more than she already had, and there was safety in numbers. 

Lexa seemed to read all of this on her face in an instant. "Maybe things have changed with Aden for this afternoon. I would have to ask. But I really do need to go to class. I need to make sure he's okay."

"I'm sure that Wells won't mind being lazy for a couple of hours," Clarke said. She wasn't actually sure that that was true, but she _was_ confident that she could convince him that whatever plans they might want to make could wait until she knew one way or another whether she was on her own or not.

They got up and pulled their pajamas (which had been discarded the night before) back on, and went to make some breakfast. 

"I already started the coffee," Wells said. "I know you're not really fit for human interaction until you've had your first dose of caffeine." 

"I'm getting better!" Clarke said. "Well, sometimes. It's easier in the summer, when it's light out when I wake up. And when I didn't stay up way too late studying or writing a paper or whatever."

"Good to know," Wells said. "What about you, Lexa? Coffee?"

"No thank you," Lexa said. 

"Tea?" Clarke asked. 

She shook her head. "I'll just have juice."

"Okay," Clarke said, retrieving it from the refrigerator for her. "Toast and eggs?" she asked. 

"Sounds good," Lexa said.

"Wait, you cook now?" Wells asked, his eyes wide in (maybe not so) feigned surprise.

"Sometimes," Clarke said. "Shocking, I know." She put bread in the toaster and pulled out a pan for the eggs, and started cooking, making plenty for all of them to eat. Lexa buttered the toast when it popped out and put in two more slices, and it wasn't long before they were all sitting down to eat in more-or-less comfortable silence. 

When they were done, Wells offered to do the dishes, until Clarke pointed out that there was a dishwasher. "Okay, fine," he said. "I'll load the dishwasher, and wash the pan since I'm assuming that that can't go in the dishwasher."

"It can," Clarke said, "but if it will make you feel better..." She grinned at him, and he rolled his eyes and gathered up their plates to take them to the kitchen.

"I should get ready for class," Lexa said. 

"Class?" Wells asked. "On a Saturday?"

"Tae Kwon Do," Lexa said. "Not college."

"Oh," he said. "Right. I think Octavia mentioned it last night." He looked over at her. "She said if I wanted to I could come watch."

"Sure," Lexa said. "With the kids' and juniors' classes, there's always parents watching. Adult class, not so much, although sometimes one of the teenagers will bring a friend or a parent will arrive early to pick up. But there's no reason that you couldn't, if you wanted to... other than the fact that because of how the school is set up, what you would be watching would mostly be our butts." She smiled at him.

"People wouldn't mind, though?"

"You met half of the people that regularly attend Saturday morning class last night," Lexa said. "If it's just a random person observing, sometimes it's a little weird, but we just ignore them. When it's a friend, or a friend of a friend... we kind of have a tendency to show off." Her smile was half smirk, half sheepish grin. 

"Is that okay?" Wells asked Clarke. "I mean, I didn't know what your plans were, but... it sounds like it could be cool. I was always curious, but my parents never let me try any kind of martial art it because 'violence isn't the answer'. Which I agree with, but I know that it's really about learning how to hurt people."

"It's fine," Clarke said, telling herself that it was. On one hand it was good, because then they could maybe all decide to do something after as a group, but on the other...

"She doesn't like watching," Lexa said, reaching out to squeeze her hand. "It makes her nervous."

"Oh," Wells said. "We don't have to, then."

"No," Clarke said. "It's fine. Maybe it won't be so bad when you're not actually testing. Maybe it will be less... intense." She'd caught the tail end of Lexa's classes a few times when she'd gone to pick her up on days when Anya hadn't been there to take her home, and mostly it had been okay. 

"Saturday mornings honestly tend to get a little bit goofy," Lexa said. "So it should be all right."

"Okay," Clarke said. "Let's get ready, then."

When they were all dressed, they got into two cars, figuring that gave them more options after, depending on what people wanted to do. They drove over to the dojang, and Wells greeted everyone that he'd met the night before, and was introduced to the people that he hadn't already met, including Aden, who looked like he was trying very hard to make it look like everything was okay. 

"Hey," Clarke said when she saw him. She was going to ask how he was doing, but then she thought better of it. She didn't want to risk upsetting him, especially before class. "This is my friend Wells. Wells, this is Aden."

"Nice to meet you," Wells said, offering a hand which Aden dutifully shook. 

"Nice to meet you too," he said, before bowing and stepping onto the mat, finding a corner to start warming up in away from everyone else. Lexa smiled grimly at Clarke, then followed him, getting close but not too close like she wanted to give him space but she also wanted him to know that she was there. 

After a few minutes, Master Gustus had everyone line up and they started their warm-ups... and then declared that they were going to spend some time on a "fun" self-defense.

"So much for less intense," Clarke said, cringing as he called Anya and Lexa out to demonstrate... and in what seemed like less than a second they went from standing, with Anya hooking the back of Lexa's neck with one hand, to both of them on the floor with Anya pinned down with Lexa's knee in her gut... and then they just stood up again like nothing had happened, and repeated it except with Lexa doing the attacking. 

"Okay, wow," Wells said. "I wasn't expecting that."

"That's... not what they usually do," Clarke said. "At least not from what I've seen. Usually there's not much throwing, and when there is, it's not that dramatic."

They watched as they worked on it for what seemed like an excessively long time – how many times could a person actually safely throw themselves and be thrown before they risked injury? – before picking up the crash mats and moving on to a more normal workout. 

By the time they came off the mats, Clarke's heartrate had returned back to normal, but she might have hugged Lexa a little tighter than she intended, even though Lexa was quite sweaty and gross by that point. Lexa hugged her back. "I'm okay," she said. "My shoulder will probably be sore tomorrow, but I'm okay, love."

"You people have a weird definition of fun," she said, and Lexa laughed. 

"We were thinking of going out to get some lunch after we've all had a chance to shower and change," Lincoln said, and when Clarke looked he was actually talking to Wells. "If you wanted to come. You and Clarke, I mean."

Wells looked over at her, and Clarke nodded. "Sounds good," she said, letting go of Lexa. 

"I'm going to go change," Lexa said. 

"Why?" Anya asked. "Then you'll just get sweat all over your clothes."

"Because I'm not going home right away," Lexa said. 

"You don't want to shower before we go out?" Anya asked. 

"I'm not—" Lexa started, then stopped. "Hold on." She went over to Aden, who was sitting in one of the chairs with his phone clutched in his hands, his grip not quite white-knuckled, but pretty close. "Hey," she said. "Are we still on for this afternoon?"

"My mom's coming," he said. "It's okay." He forced a smile. "See? She's here now." He stood up as his mother opened the door, and was greeted by the assembled group. Clarke couldn't help noticing that, even though she probably hadn't started treatment yet, she already looked exhausted. She suspected that the previous night might have been fairly sleepless. Even if she didn't have to work that day, she looked like maybe she could use a break. 

Clarke glanced over at Lexa, her eyes flicking to Aden, then raised her eyebrows. Lexa frowned slightly, looking around at the group, a question in her eyes. Clarke nodded slightly. 

"Hey," Lexa said, reaching out to nudge Aden's shoulder. "That doesn't mean we can't still hang out. We're all going out to lunch, and after they're going to show Wells around the city, find something fun to do. We could go with them, or we could do something ourselves like we planned."

He shook his head. "No ma'am," he said softly. "I wouldn't want to be in the way."

"You wouldn't be in the way," Lexa said. 

The group had gotten quiet, and if they didn't know the details, they had pretty clearly all figured out that there was something bigger going on here.

"You wouldn't be in the way," Octavia agreed. "Come on. What's Lexa going to do if we're walking around the city and she doesn't have her Pokemon hunting buddy? She would be stuck with all of us just teasing her the entire time."

The corner of Aden's mouth quirked slightly, and he looked at his mother, then shook his head again. "I should go home," he said. "I have homework."

"You can do your homework tomorrow," his mother said. "Go and have fun."

"But—"

"Come here," Ms. Wolfe said, and motioned for him to follow her outside. Clarke couldn't hear what they were saying, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that Aden was worried about leaving his mother alone, and she was trying to convince him that she would be fine, and that he should go and have fun. And if it was a little strange that he would be hanging out with a bunch of college kids, well... she obviously trusted them, and maybe she thought it would be better for him to be with people who were adult enough to look out for him. 

Finally he poked his head back in. "Mom says I can, but can someone pick me up at my house after I change?"

"Absolutely," Clarke said. "Wells and I will come get you, and everyone can meet up for lunch. That way Lexa can go home and shower, too."

"Okay," he said. "I'll be quick getting ready." 

"Okay," Clarke said. "I'll see you in a little bit." She looked up at his mom as he walked back out, and she saw her mouth, 'Thank you.' Clarke just nodded back at her. It seemed like the least that she, or any of them, could do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the self-defense I'm describing is a real thing. We call it a sacrifice throw and you basically throw yourself to throw the other person. It is awesome and painful. (I am not 100% sure I did not stress fracture my collarbone...)


	138. Lexa

Lexa walked with Clarke and Wells back down the parking lot. "I'm sorry," she said, to both of them but mostly to Wells. "I'm sure this wasn't—"

But Wells didn't give her a chance to finish. "It's okay," he said. "I came to see Clarke, and to get to see what her life is like here. I'm just getting to see a little more than I expected, maybe." He smiled, and Lexa wanted to let that reassure her but somehow it didn't. 

"Things are just... a little complicated right now," she said. 

"It's okay," Wells said again. "You gotta do what you gotta do, right?" His smile widened. "I see now why Octavia calls him your son."

"Really, O?" she said as Octavia and Lincoln walked past. Octavia just smiled and waved. Lexa rolled her eyes. "Why do we hang out with her again?"

"Sometimes I really wonder," Clarke said, but Lexa knew that she wasn't serious, and really, Lexa wasn't all that serious herself. Sure, sometimes Octavia's sense of humor was a little irritating, but in the grand scheme of things, who did it hurt?

Well... except if Aden heard it it might hurt him right now, when the subject of mothers was likely to be a sore one... and she tried not to think about what would happen to him if something _did_ go wrong, if his mother didn't recover after all. He had a father, and despite her initial impression of him not being entirely positive, now that she'd talked to Aden more, she knew that he was mostly a decent guy; he was just rarely around, and he had a tendency to speak first and think after that sometimes clashed with Aden's quiet, carefully thought out and measured way of being. Would his father give up his life on the road to take care of Aden? A kid couldn't grow up in the cab of a big truck; he would have to stay somewhere, with someone, to go to school. Were there grandparents in the picture? If there were, where?

She forced herself to stop that train of thought, to stop borrowing trouble when she should be doing her absolute best to keep a positive mindset, to be strong so that Aden could lean on her if he needed to. 

"I should get home and get changed," Lexa said after a probably too long pause. "Thanks for picking him up."

"Of course," Clarke said. "It's not a problem, and since we're the only ones who don't need to go make ourselves fit to be seen in public, it makes the most sense."

"I'll see you in a little bit." Lexa hesitated, waiting for Clarke to make the first move if a move was going to be made, not sure even after an evening spent cuddled on the couch together with Wells right there just how much PDA Clarke wanted to show in front of her friend. But Clarke touched her arm, drawing her in close enough to kiss her lightly before getting into her car. 

At home, she was surprised (but not very) to find that Raven was still there, stretched out on a couch that Lexa was 99% sure she had not slept on, busily sketching something (if one could call it sketching when it involved a compass and a ruler, and did she actually carry those around with her everywhere?). "Hey," she said, looking up. "You look like you're feeling better than when you left last night."

"I am," Lexa said, smiling at her. "Thank you."

"Sure," Raven said, and went back to her drawing. Lexa grabbed her clothing out of her bag and went into the bathroom, taking a quick shower and then braiding back her hair so that she didn't have to deal with it. She leaned in close to the mirror, staring herself in the eye, looking for cracks in her armor to try to shore them up before facing a day with Aden, whose emotional state she could only try to guess.

When she finally emerged from her bathroom, Anya and Raven were already getting ready to leave. "Are we riding together or are you taking your car?" Anya asked her.

"I better take mine, in case I need to take Aden home or something," Lexa said. 

Anya nodded. "Let's go. We don't want to keep everyone waiting."

They headed for the diner where they'd agreed to meet, and soon had the same group as the night before assembled, with the addition of Aden, who Lexa could tell was trying very hard to hide the fact that he was maybe not entirely comfortable with the fact that there were seven adults (or near-adults)... and him. Lexa rested her hand on his shoulder briefly, giving it a squeeze before making sure that he had a seat on one side of her with Clarke on the other, because this time the table wasn't round and Wells would be fine sitting across from Clarke instead of next to her. 

It was slightly chaotic as everyone looked over the menu, but finally they'd made their decisions and placed their orders, and everyone seemed to settle into conversation easily enough, with a lot of it surrounding Tae Kwon Do, with Wells asking a lot of questions about what he'd seen, and people talking over each other trying to answer. 

"Hey," Lincoln said, reaching across the table to tap Aden's hand, where he had been fidgeting with his phone. "Are you coming to camp?"

Aden nodded. "Yessir," he said, then grimaced. "Yes, I am."

"Both weeks?"

He nodded again.

"Awesome." Lincoln held up his hand for fist bump, which Aden gave with only a little hesitation. "Camper or...?"

"I guess kind of a counselor-in-training," Aden said. "That's what Master Gustus said, anyway. If I wanted to."

"Is he paying you?" Anya asked.

"A little bit." Lexa saw his cheek indent as he bit the inside of it. "I think he's making it cost less, too, for me to go. If I help out."

"You should," Lincoln said. "You still get to have fun, you would just help out like you do in the kids' class, too."

"Yeah," Aden said. "I probably will." He looked over at Lexa. "Are you doing it?"

Lexa nodded. "Full time, both weeks," she said. "Because apparently Master Gustus wants to test the limits of my sanity." She smiled at him. "Lincoln promises that it's fun, and I'm pretty sure he cannot tell a lie." She smirked, and Lincoln winked at her.

"Isn't that George Washington?" Clarke asked. "And the cherry tree?"

"I'm pretty sure that – along with vast swaths of your American History book – is a lie," Raven chimed in. 

"It's certainly an embellishment on the truth, if not an outright lie," Anya said. "But history gets told by the winner, and they get to tell it any way they want to."

"It's way too early for this," Octavia said, rubbing the bridge of her nose. 

"It's nearly noon!" Raven said. 

"Fine, then it's way too summer," Octavia said back. "Anyway, we don't want to scare Wells off."

"Why would I be scared off?" Wells asked. 

Octavia looked over at him and then shrugged. "I don't know. I can just sort of feel the conversation drifting into the shouty place."

"Only if someone decided to play devil's advocate," Anya said. "Otherwise, I think that we're all pretty close to being on the same page about most things."

Lexa watched as Aden's eyes darted from one face to the next to the next, and he seemed to shrink in on himself a little, because yeah, it was pretty easy to sense that things could go south pretty quickly. She looked past him to shoot a look at Anya.

Anya looked back at her for a moment, and then winked. "You forget that there's another option," she said. 

"Oh?" Octavia asked warily, like she wasn't sure she actually wanted to know.

"'Let me tell you what I wish I'd known when I was young and dreamed of glory. You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story,'" Anya replied, and there was a collective groan. 

"What?" Anya asked innocently. "Isn't Hamilton better than the shouty place?"

"Only if Lexa raps," Raven said, grinning wickedly. 

"Wait, what?" Wells asked.

Lexa was glad when the conversation was derailed by the arrival of their food, and when it started back up again it shifted to what they were going to do with the rest of the afternoon.

When the food was eaten and the bill was paid (and Aden's mom had given him money to pay for himself, even though Lexa was pretty sure that any one of them would happily have covered his meal out of their own pocket) they went out into the parking lot. They'd decided to just head towards the area where there were a lot of museums grouped together and decide when they got there what looked most interesting. Lexa pulled out her phone and tapped on the Pokemon app to bring it up, because if they were walking she might as well get something out of it. She saw Aden glance at her, then do the same.

It didn't take long before they'd fallen a few steps behind the rest of the group, because sometimes it was hard to keep walking and catch Pokemon at the same time. When they realized it (and whatever Pokemon they'd been going after had been secured) they would catch back up, to a lot of good-natured eye-rolling.

When everyone finally decided on an exhibit they wanted to see, they tucked their phones away. Aden was quiet at her side, and she didn't try to press him to talk, just watched him out of the corner of her eye to make sure that he was okay. "If there's anything you especially want to see, speak up," she told him gently. "I don't want you to just get dragged around bored all day."

"I'm not bored," he said. 

"Okay. Well if you _get_ bored, you can tell me."

"Okay," he said, and then he looked up at her and she thought she saw the hint of a smile, carefully fought back. "If _you_ get bored, you can tell _me_ ," he said. 

Lexa laughed. "Oh, so you're willing to take the fall and be the bad guy who wants to move on?" she asked. 

"Only for you," he said.

Lexa wrapped an arm around his shoulders and hugged him against her side, and she could swear that he was taller now than he had been when she'd first met him only a few months before. She supposed it was to be expected, but the idea of him eventually (and maybe not so far into the future) getting to be taller than her was a little unsettling. She was surprised when he actually looped his arm around her waist and squeezed back, and they stayed like that for a few steps before they had to speed up to catch up with everyone so they didn't lose track of them. 

After a quick stop at another museum for what turned out to be a rather over-hyped art exhibit, they headed for the science center... where they attracted somewhat alarmed looks from parents herding groups of sticky-faced children, and security guards alike. Lexa wanted to glare back at them, because they weren't _doing_ anything – they weren't even engaging in any heated debates of controversial topics, and no one was holding hands – but apparently young adults in large-ish groups that maybe looked a little bit like the United Colors of Benetton Gone Punk sent up red flags in people's heads, so they would have to be on their best behavior.

As it turned out, their best behavior in an environment where they were not only allowed but encouraged to touch and interact with exhibits was roughly the equivalent of well-behaved, overgrown 10-year-olds. They dashed (carefully) from one exhibit to the next, tugging on each other to show off something that they'd found particularly interesting. Raven and Clarke both got mistaken for tour guides more than once as they went on tangents about things that they found particularly interesting. 

By the time they left, everyone was a happy kind of tired, and hungry again. This led to the beginnings of a debate about where they should eat, everyone sprawling on the ground in the shade when they couldn't find anywhere else to sit while they figured it out.

"When is your mom expecting you back?" Lexa asked. 

"I dunno," Aden said. "She didn't say a specific time. I guess before dinner?"

"Okay," Lexa said, glancing at her phone and its dangerously low battery. It was nearly five o'clock; no wonder they were hungry. "Should I take you home?"

Aden shrugged. "I guess," he said. "If you want."

"I'm asking you if _you_ want," Lexa said. "I'm happy to have you stick." She looked over at him, saw that he was pulling up strands of grass, and reached out to take his hand and stop him. "If you want to stay out, we'll just check with your mom, okay?"

"I don't want to keep you from having fun with your friends," he said.

"Who's not having fun?" she asked. Aden shrugged. "Do you want to go home?" she asked him.

He shrugged again, then slowly shook his head. "I know I should, but..." He frowned, then shook his head again, but this time he seemed to be telling himself no. "No. I should. I have to." He straightened his back and looked at her. "I have to go home." 

"Okay," she said. "If you're sure."

"I have to," he repeated, like saying it a third time would convince them both... and Lexa realized then why he was doing it. 

"Your mom will be okay without you for a few hours," she said. "It's not your job to take care of her."

"Yes it is," he said. "She takes care of me, so I have to take care of her."

Already, Lexa was pretty sure she was in over her head, and that she was going to get this all wrong, but she had to say something. She had to try. "You're the kid, Aden. She's the adult. The parent. It's her job to take care of you. And there's nothing wrong with wanting to help her when she needs help, but it's not your responsibility to..." She didn't know how to finish. She didn't know what to say. "She's fine right now," she told him. "Maybe there will be days when she'll need you to help her out, but not today." She squeezed his hand, which she still had hold of. "She wanted you to come out and have fun. If you're not ready to go home yet, it's okay to ask if you can stay out a while longer."

"I shouldn't want to, though," he said. "She's my _mom_. I shouldn't want to, to be away from her. Not now. Not when—" He stopped himself, his eyes going wide like he'd just realized he'd almost spilled his mom's secret. 

"I know," she said softly, meaning it both in the sense that she understood what he was feeling, but also wanting him to understand that she knew what was going on with his mom. "She told me," she added, so there could be no confusion. She shifted so that she was facing him, looking at his eyes even when he wouldn't meet hers. "But here's the thing, and it's hard to understand and it's even harder to do, sometimes, but if you don't take care of yourself, it makes it harder to take care of other people." A lesson that she was still learning, and might always still be learning. "You're dealing with a lot right now, and maybe you need space to do that. That's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. I'm sure that she understands. She's dealt with a lot of sick people, and the families of a lot of sick people."

"It's not fair," he said, and his eyes filled with tears. "I hate it! It's not fair."

She pulled him into her arms and held him tight, and for a few seconds he was stiff, resisting, and then something in him just seemed to give out, and he collapsed against her, half in her lap as he began to cry. 

Lexa saw the others noticing, and she gave them a look that told them they'd better not say anything. No one did. They just arranged themselves to form a kind of bubble around them to shield them from anyone else who passed by until Aden finally lifted his head, sniffling, and wiped his eyes with the tissue that Clarke handed him. 

"Sor—" he started, but Lexa shook her head slightly.

"Not with me," she said, brushing back his hair where it had plastered to his forehead with sweat. "You don't ever have to be sorry with me."

He nodded, carefully avoiding the eyes of everyone else. 

It was Lincoln who finally broke the silence, crouching down to put a hand on his shoulder. "Whaddaya think about some ice cream?" he asked. "I promise I won't tell if you eat it before your dinner."

Aden smiled and nodded. "Ice cream sounds good."

"Okay," Lincoln said, and offered him a hand up, keeping a hand lightly on his back as they discussed what the best kind of ice cream was. 

Clarke fell into step beside Lexa, and Lexa shifted her hand to link it with Clarke's. "I'm okay," she said. 

"I know," Clarke said. "But I'm here anyway."


	139. Clarke

"I see why you love her," Wells said. 

Clarke looked up from the her sketchbook, which she'd pulled out while they watched TV to have something to do with her hands, to distract her from the fact that she was trying not to worry about Lexa. She was fine, she kept telling herself. She would be fine, and if she _wasn't_ fine, she would call. "What?"

"I said, 'I can see why you love her'," Wells repeated. "I'm sorry I ever doubted you. Or her."

"She's good," Clarke said. "She's got a good heart."

"Yeah," Wells said. "I noticed." He paused whatever show he was watching on Netflix (Clarke really wasn't paying any attention) and looked at her. "What's going on with the kid?" he asked. "Aden."

Clarke frowned, considering. What was going on with Aden was his business, and although Lexa had told _her_ , she wasn't sure how public anyone wanted the knowledge to be. But what was the harm in telling Wells, who didn't live around here and therefore wasn't likely to cause any problem if he told anyone that he knew. Unless he kept talking to her friends, which didn't seem outside of the realm of possibility – Octavia in particular was likely to at least become friends with him on Facebook – in which case a word to one of them could mean all of them knowing. 

Not that Octavia was a gossip; she just sometimes had different ideas than Clarke did about who needed to know when something was on a need to know basis. 

"He just got some bad news," Clarke said finally, keeping it general. "That's why Lexa's Tae Kwon Do instructor called her in yesterday, to tell her what was going on in case he turned to her for support."

"And that upset her?" Wells asked. 

"It hit close to home," Clarke said. "She's been through what he's going through, only she was younger and the outcome... wasn't good." She grimaced, hating lying to him, or even just withholding details, but it really wasn't her place to be saying any of this. 

Wells seemed to pick up on this, and he just nodded slightly. "I hope things turn out better for Aden. And that Lexa's all right."

"They should," Clarke said. "And thank you." 

He turned the show back on, and she went back to her sketch, shading in the contours of Lexa's face and the way the light reflected off Aden's dark blonde hair. A little while later, she said good night and headed for bed. She texted Lexa good night, as she did every night that they weren't together (which had become few and far between) and got a response back within a few seconds, wishing her good night in return.

She had been afraid that sleep wouldn't come easily, but apparently all of the walking around that day had tired her out more than she'd thought, and she was out within a few minutes of closing her eyes. 

The next morning she and Wells went out to breakfast. The conversation was light, mostly just talking about their plans for the rest of the summer, and when they were finished he insisted on picking up the check. "It's the least I can do for you putting me up – and putting up with me – for the weekend." He grinned at her, and she rolled her eyes and let him. After that it was a quick trip back to her apartment for him to finish packing up his things, and then they headed back to the station so that he could catch the train home. 

Clarke hugged him tightly, resting her cheek against his shoulder as he squeezed her back. "Thank you for coming," she said. "It was good seeing you."

"It was good seeing you too," he said. "Tell all of your friends that I really enjoyed meeting them."

"I will," Clarke said. "Don't be surprised if Octavia hounds you on social media."

"I won't," Wells said. "Take care of yourself, okay?"

"I will," Clarke said again. 

"And your girl," he added a second later. "I think... I think if you want it to last... I think you've got something good there."

"Thank you," Clarke said, her throat tightening. She meant it not just for his well-wishes for Lexa, but also for his finally understanding that his first impression of Lexa had been wrong, and for acknowledging that they were good for each other, and good together. Not that she needed his approval; it wouldn't change anything if he'd never come around, at least not with her relationship with Lexa, but it was still nice to have it.

After one last hug, she watched him head for the track where his train was waiting. When he'd disappeared from sight, she went back to her car and pulled out her phone to text Lexa.

**CLARKE:** You up?

It was a silly question. Of course Lexa was up; she had probably been up for an hour before Clarke had even thought about cracking her eyes open. 

Lexa's response was an eye-rolling emoji, and Clarke laughed.

**CLARKE:** What are you doing today?

**LEXA:** I didn't have any plans.

**CLARKE:** Want to have no plans with me?

**LEXA:** Always. Your place or mine?

**CLARKE:** I'm already out so I'll come to you.

**LEXA:** See you soon.

Clarke put the car into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, heading for Lexa's. She let herself in (which still felt a little bit strange and kind of amazing every time she did it, with her imagination running a little bit wild every time with the possibility that maybe someday she would have a key to a place that was _theirs_ , that she would come home every day to a place that she shared with Lexa.

Lexa was on the couch with her laptop in her lap, but she set it aside as soon as Clarke came in and held out her arms, which Clarke was more than happy to fall into, sprawling on top of her and cuddling close. "Will you laugh at me if I say that I missed you?" she asked. "Even though we were apart for less than 24 hours?"

"I missed you too," Lexa said. Clarke felt her press her lips against her hair. "I didn't sleep very well last night."

Clarke looked up at her. "You should have called me!" she said. 

"I didn't want to disturb your last night with your friend," Lexa said. "And don't tell me that it wouldn't have mattered, because maybe it wouldn't have to you, but I think it might have to him. He'd already spent most of the weekend with all of us when really he came to see you." She ran her fingers through Clarke's hair. "You're here now."

Clarke pressed her lips together, not sure whether to argue with her about the relative importance of Wells' happiness versus Lexa's in her life, but finally decided that it wasn't worth it. Why make a bigger deal out if than it needed to be? "We could always take a nap," she said.

"We could," Lexa said, "if you wanted."

"You're the one who didn't sleep," Clarke pointed out. 

"I know," Lexa said, "but I always worry that if I take a nap I won't sleep again tonight, and I work early tomorrow so I need to make sure that I don't mess up my sleep schedule too much."

"Ugh," Clarke groaned. "That was way too much adultiness coming out of your mouth."

"I'm a 90-year-old trapped in a 19-year-old's body," Lexa said, then wrinkled her nose and laughed. "Except I'm 20 now."

"Did you forget you had a birthday?" Clarke asked. 

"Maybe? A little bit?" Lexa smiled wryly. "I honestly did forget my birthday last year," she said. "Anya remembered, though. It actually ended up being a good day. She took me out to this ranch and we went riding."

"I think you told me," Clarke said. "You rode the unrideable horse."

"She wasn't unrideable," Lexa said. "She'd just been handled badly and didn't trust many people." She nuzzled against Clarke's temple. "We had a lot in common."

"Mmm..." Clarke tipped her face up and kissed Lexa lightly. "You trust me, though."

"Of course I trust you," Lexa said. "You've never given me any reason not to." She kissed Clarke, and for a moment it seemed like the kiss might lead to more, but then Anya came out of her room and Lexa pulled her hand back out from under the hem of Clarke's shirt.

"Really?" Anya asked. "Your room is like five steps away."

"We weren't doing anything," Lexa said, all wide-eyed innocence, and for a second Clarke thought she was actually trying to deny it, but then she felt her shake slightly as she struggled not to laugh. 

"Riiiiight," Anya said. "Well, if you're going to continue to not do anything, can you not do it in your room?"

"We were just going out," Lexa said.

"We were?" Clarke asked.

"We were," Lexa said. She sat up, dislodging Clarke from her (very comfortable) place nestled against her, and Clarke grudgingly righted herself as well. 

"Where were we going?" Clarke asked.

"The botanical gardens," Lexa said. "I haven't been this year, and I want to get some pictures while things are still blooming."

Clarke perked up at that. "Can we stop at my place on the way?" she said. "I want to grab my sketchbook."

"Absolutely," Lexa said. She went into her room and came out a minute later with her camera bag. They waved goodbye to Anya and headed out, stopping at Clarke's as promised so she could gather some art supplies, which she stuffed into a backpack. 

The parking lot at the botanical gardens was nearly full, and Clarke could see the pinched look that came over Lexa's face as she mentally calculated what that would translate to when it came to the relative crowdedness of the sprawling acres of greenery. "It'll be okay," Clarke said, reaching over and touching her hand gently. "If it gets to be too much, we'll leave."

Lexa nodded, and they got out of the car. Once they were past the gates, they decided to just follow the paths at random and see where it took them. "I've actually never been here," Clarke admitted. 

"Costia loved flowers," Lexa said, "so we came here a lot." She smiled crookedly. "Of course my favorite time to come was in the winter, which she never understood. 'Nothing's blooming!' she always complained. 'There's also no people,' I would always tell her, and she would roll her eyes and sigh and generally just be disgruntled about it until finally I stopped asking her to come with me when I just wanted to walk and enjoy the green."

"You weren't very much alike, were you?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa shrugged. "We were and we weren't. The biggest difference, I think, was that she was definitely an extrovert, and I'm an introvert, and that manifested in a lot of different ways that caused a lot of friction." She looked over at Clarke. "I think she just has a hard time understanding that I could be different than she was and still be..." She frowned. "I don't even know. I guess she saw it as something about me that could be changed, that could be fixed, but there was – is – nothing wrong with me being the way that I am. It's just different."

Clarke nodded, not sure what to say. She couldn't say that she thought that Lexa was perfect, because of course she wasn't. No one was. But she was still amazing, not in spite of her imperfections but because of them. Because she'd been hurt, been damaged almost past endurance, but she'd survived, she'd persevered, and now here she was, as strong (or maybe stronger) than ever. Because she'd never had love modeled for her when she was growing up, or at least not after her mother died, but she loved anyway. She loved without holding anything back, although maybe she would have if she could, but she couldn't. 

"This way?" Lexa suggested, motioning down a path that branched left.

"Sure."

They paused briefly at a bench for Lexa to get out her camera – or both her cameras, Clarke discovered, and she must have had a strange look on her face because when Lexa glanced over at her she laughed. "This one's digital," she said, holding it up, "and this one is film. Even though I still haven't found anywhere to develop. I have so many rolls of film just sitting around waiting."

"If you don't have any way to develop them, why do you keep taking pictures with it?" Clarke asked.

"Because I like it," Lexa said. "I like that I don't know how the picture turned out right away. I like that I can't just delete it if it comes out wrong. There's something more... permanent about it, somehow. I don't know. I'll find somewhere eventually."

They walked, pausing every little way so that Lexa could grab a shot, switching between the two cameras depending on what exactly she was trying to capture. Finally Clarke found a bed of flowers that particularly captured her interest and she sat down on a bench and pulled out her sketchpad. "You can keep going," Clarke said. "Drawing takes a little longer than taking a picture. I'll catch up to you, or you can come back."

Lexa hesitated for a moment, then nodded. "Okay," she said, leaning down to kiss Clarke's head before heading off to see what was down the next path.

Clarke began to pencil in the lines of the flowers, the curves of the petals and the straighter lines of the leaves, and realized that she should have asked Lexa to take a picture so that she would have it later for reference, because she thought maybe she might like to turn this into a watercolor. Maybe she had... or maybe she would come back and Clarke could ask her then.

She wasn't sure how long passed, but when she glanced up for another looked at the flowers, she found someone standing just to the side of her line of vision, and her heart leapt into her throat as she scanned up to the face, terrified of what – who – she would find.

" _Tut mir leid,_ " the person said. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you. I didn't want to disturb you while you were drawing."

Luna. It was just Luna. Lexa's friend. It wasn't Finn. The wave of adrenaline that had rushed through her made her slightly queasy even as it abated. 

"It's Clarke, _ja_?" Luna asked. "Lexa's Clarke. It would be very embarrassing if I have the wrong person." 

"I'm Clarke," she finally managed. "You're Luna."

"I am," she agreed, coming over and offering a hand, which Clarke shook, smiling warmly at her. "I'm sorry again. I didn't mean to alarm you. I just wanted to say hello."

"It's okay," Clarke said. "Lexa's here somewhere. She went to take more pictures while I drew."

"May I see?" Luna asked, sitting down beside her. 

Clarke turned the sketchbook toward her, and Luna's hand came up, tracing the lines without actually touching the paper, like she knew that she might smudge it if she did. " _Es ist sehr gut!_ " she said, her smile growing even wider. Clarke didn't have to speak German to understand the praise. "You are an artist."

It wasn't a question, or at least it didn't read as one. 

"When I have the time to be," Clarke said. "I've been trying to get back into it this summer, before school starts back up again and everything turns into chaos." She smiled, hoping it didn't look as forced as it felt. 

Luna smiled sympathetically. "It's hard, sometimes," she said. "There are so many things we want to do, or need to do, and there are only so many hours in the day. We have to choose, but sometimes we don't want to, because the things that we want to do... we value them more than the things that we must do, and still we must choose the things that we must do." 

Clarke looked at her, trying to puzzle out whether she was just talking from her own experience or whether she was trying to offer some kind of advice. "And not everyone always agrees on what your priorities should be," she said. 

"You must do what is best for you," Luna said. "Even if others would not agree. In the end, you are the only one who really knows what that is, although many think they know, and some may be very close to right many times."

Clarke nodded, assuming she was probably talking about Lexa, but maybe she wasn't. Whether she was or not, though, she knew that Lexa _did_ want what was best for her, but Luna was right that there might be times where Lexa didn't actually know what that was. On the other hand, she always listened, and maybe that was more important than always being right.

"Will you tell her I say hello?" Luna asked. "Even though I will see her tomorrow."

"I could text her," Clarke said. "Say that you're here."

"No," Luna said. "That's all right. Derrick is waiting."

"Oh," Clarke said. "All right." The whole interaction felt slightly surreal as Luna stood up again. "It was nice talking to you," she said. 

"And you," Luna said. "Maybe sometime we all can get together."

"That would be nice," Clarke said, even though she didn't even really know who Luna meant by 'we all'. She wondered if Luna knew that she also knew Lincoln, that her roommate was dating him. Would Lexa have told her? It seemed like it ought to have come up. She watched her go, and then glanced down at her drawing. It was as done as it was going to get; she'd lost the flow of it.

She got up and went to find Lexa, who it turned out was heading back to retrieve her. She told her about running into Luna (or Luna finding her, really) and about the somewhat strange conversation they'd had. 

Lexa smiled. "That's just Luna," she said. "She's kind of always been like that. She was philosophical about it even when I tried to hit her the first time we met."

Clarke shook her head. "She said that we should all get together sometime. I have no idea who she meant, of course."

"We should," Lexa said. "As I was walking, I was thinking about what Octavia said when we were camping, about how soon all of us would possibly be going out separate ways, and I got this idea about how it would be nice to get everyone together for a picnic or something before the end of the summer. I'd like to get pictures of people to have..." Her voice trailed off and Clarke didn't need her to finish the sentence to know what she was thinking.

She'd liked to have pictures of people to have in case they suddenly weren't around anymore. She'd like to capture the moments they had in case they didn't last. 

"We can do that," Clarke said. "Of course we can do that. We'll just figure out a date and a time and a place and we'll get everyone together."

"Okay," Lexa said, and Clarke put her arms around her and held her close for a long time, not caring who stared.


	140. Lexa

As it turned out, coordinating everyone for a little get-together wasn't as easy as Clarke had made it sound like it would, or should, be. (Or maybe that had just been Lexa's assumption.) It also turned out to not be that little, because when they finally found a date that worked for people, all of a sudden everyone's parents were coming to town, and they couldn't very well blow them off, could they? 

"I'm sorry," Clarke said. "My mom is here consulting on a case and it would be rude to say that I'm too busy to see her, right?"

"It's okay," Lexa said, adding Abby and Marcus and Vera to the mental list of people that she'd been keeping, which she was starting to think she'd better write down. 

"We could always reschedule," Clarke said, "if you just want to keep it to us."

"There's no other time," Lexa said. "Everyone's busy."

"It's _summer_ ," Clarke said. "How can everyone be so busy?"

"Work, finals, trips they've already planned..." Lexa shrugged. "It'll be okay." _I just need to adjust my expectations._

They ended up actually booking one of the pavilions in the botanical gardens just so that they would have a sort of 'home base' for everyone to gather that would offer them shade and a place to set up the pot luck picnic that they were having. It cost more money than Lexa wanted to think about, but hopefully it would be worth it. 

For several days leading up to the event, she had nightmares about the weather turning against them, but when they woke up on the morning of the sun was shining and the air was blessedly dry and if not cool, at least it wasn't threatening to be sweltering. It had stormed in the night, which Lexa had slept through but she suspected the noise had been incorporated into her dreams somehow. She couldn't remember the specifics, only that they'd been terrifying. 

Clarke stirred beside her, letting Lexa roll over to face her. She burrowing under Clarke's arm and laid her head on her shoulder. "Good morning, Clarke," she whispered, her lips brushing her hair.

"Good morning, Lexa," Clarke replied, tipping her face up for a kiss. "You slept terribly last night."

Lexa grimaced. "I'm sorry," she said, because if Clarke was commenting it must have been bad enough to keep her awake. Clarke had her own troubled dreams sometimes, but they were less frequent and less violent than Lexa's, at least as far as she'd noticed. "Did I hurt you?" 

"No," Clarke said, kissing her again. "Not this time."

"I'm sorry," she said again. "I think I'm going to go for a run. Do you want to come?"

Clarke shook her head. "Don't go," she said. 

Lexa looked at her, and although it seemed like Clarke was trying to smile, turn it into a flirtation, there was something quietly pleading in her gaze. And if she'd kept her up half the night tossing and turning, she owed her at least this much. So she didn't go...

... and she didn't regret it, and by the time they heard Anya come back in from her run, Clarke was really smiling, and Lexa was pretty sure that the endorphins coursing through her system were at least as good as what she could have gotten from running. 

"We should get up and shower," Lexa said. "Start getting ready."

"Can I come with you?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa glanced at the clock. She wasn't actually sure how long it would take to get everything ready, but more time had passed than she'd expected (or she'd woken up later than she'd thought) and although in theory both of them showering at the same time was quicker, in practice it never was, even if they didn't get... distracted. "Better not," she said, then kissed Clarke to tuck her lower lip back into place when she started to pout.

"You can go first then," Clarke said.

"Okay." But it was another few minutes before Clarke actually let her get up, and Anya rolled her eyes at her as she crossed the hall, tousle-haired and flushed. Lexa flipped her off and closed the bathroom door behind her. 

She and Clarke changed places, and after she'd gotten dressed she went out into the kitchen, where Anya was making breakfast. She picked up the kettle, which Anya had already put on so she would have hot water for tea, and made herself a cup, sliding onto one of the stools at the breakfast bar. 

Anya glanced over her shoulder at her. "Have you talked to your father lately?" she asked.

Lexa's stomach immediately clenched. "No. Why?" The last time she'd spoken to her father was about a week after she'd gotten her car, when he'd called to check in and make sure that everything was running smoothly with it. He'd told her to call if there were any problems, and there hadn't been so, she hadn't bothered. 

"Shit," Anya said. She scooped eggs onto a plate along with some toast and a few links of sausage and slid them across the counter to Lexa. "I told him to call you."

"He called _you_?" Lexa asked.

"He texted me."

"My father knows how to text?" Lexa tried to turn it into a joke, because the alternative was letting the panic that was building take over, and she wished that Clarke would hurry up and get out here.

Anya rolled her eyes. "Yes, your father knows how to text," she said. "Anyway, I told him to call you. Or text you."

"Why?" Lexa demanded. 

Anya turned to look at her and sighed. "He's in town," she said. "Because this is apparently the Place to Be this weekend." 

"What does that have to do with me?" Lexa asked. 

"He said he had something to bring you," Anya said. "I told him..." Her voice trailed off, and Anya never looked guilty about anything, but she looked guilty now. "I told him about everyone getting together. I told him if he wanted to see you today, that's where you would be."

Lexa's fingers tightened around her fork, and she forced herself to loosen them. She forced herself to take a breath in through her nose, letting it out slowly over twice as many counts as the inhale, a trick she'd learned in Tae Kwon Do to get her breathing back under control. She speared a sausage link and brought it to her mouth, taking a bite and chewing it more times than it probably needed to be chewed, and forced herself to swallow. Finally, when she was sure that her voice would be steady, she said, "Okay."

"Okay," Anya answered, and Lexa could hear that there was still a hint of a question in it, but not one that she was actually going to ask, because she'd learned that if Lexa said she was okay, then it was usually better not to try to force her to discuss it further, because then she might not be so okay anymore.

Lexa gave her full attention to her plate, even when Clarke slid onto the stool next to her. "What'd I miss?" she asked. "And do not start singing at me." She said the words brightly, but her eyes slid back and forth between them. 

"My father might show up," Lexa said. "Anya just told me."

"Oh," Clarke said. "He can hang out with the other old people." She reached out to touch Lexa's knee, squeezing it gently, and Lexa looked over at her and forced a smile. "Seems like there's going to be plenty of them."

"Considering Anya is bringing three," Lexa said, "yeah."

"Is it my fault that they're all in the same country at the same time? The same city, even?" Anya shook her head. "This happens practically never, and when it does they decide that it's 'family time'. Even though half the time they drive each other crazy."

"I still don't think I've heard the full story of how you have three parents," Clarke said. "Not that it's any of my business, and not that it's actually unusual with stepfamilies and all of that, but I kind of get the feeling that that isn't actually the situation."

"It's not," Anya said. "To make a long story short, my mom Sun was in a relationship with my dad Matt. Not a serious relationship, really. Friends with benefits, more or less. I definitely wasn't planned, and when my mom found out that she was pregnant, she seriously considered terminating the pregnancy. She told Dad about it, and he said that he would support her in whatever decision she decided to make, in whatever way that she wanted to be supported. She ended up deciding to go through with it, obviously, and not to give me up for adoption, which was a tough decision considering that she wasn't about to retire from active duty just because she had a kid, and neither was he. When I was about two, Mom met Nat and they became friends and she became basically a second mother to me, and honestly the more typically motherly of the two, and so I pretty much just ended up with three parents. And don't ask me what the current status of any of their relationships to each other are, because I honestly try not to think too much about it. They all get along, Mom and Nat live together when they're both in the same place, Dad doesn't live with them but keeps in close touch..." She shrugged. "Oh, and yes. Matt and Nat. Apparently my mom's 'type' has to do with names." 

"I guess there are worse things?" Clarke said. 

"I guess there are," Anya agreed.

After they'd eaten, they started to pack up, with Anya directing the packing of the food into the back of her car. She'd made enough to feed more people than were likely to be there, never mind the fact that others were bringing food as well, but she'd told them that it had provided relief from studying and grading papers so really, everyone was doing _her_ a favor. 

When they got to the pavilion, Octavia and Lincoln were already there and they helped get everything set up, and soon people started arriving in pairs and small groups, and before Lexa even realized it there was a party happening around her, and everyone was smiling and hugging her because it had been her idea, so apparently it was her party. She wasn't sure she actually wanted to be the one playing hostess, but at this point she didn't really have a choice. She kept reminding herself that these were her friends (for the most part – Bellamy still gave her a pretty wide berth, but when Raven had asked if she could invite Gina it hadn't seemed right to exclude Bellamy from the invitation). This was her family... extended family, even, with friends of friends and relatives of friends there. She saw Anya's moms and dad arrive, and noticed that Nat immediately gravitated to Abby and the baby, and Sun seemed to be chatting happily with Marcus. Raven and Matt were nerding out with Anya looking alternately amused and embarrassed. 

Aden arrived with his mom, who settled in the shade with Abby and the baby after Anya's moms moved on, and she watched as their conversation seemed to turn a little more serious. She wondered if they were discussing Ms. Wolfe's medical treatment. She thought about going to check on Aden, but he actually seemed to be listening and paying attention, and then she saw Abby turn to talk to him directly, and maybe she had some kind of reassurance she could offer him as a doctor that no one else had been able to. 

"What are you doing over here all alone?" Luna asked, coming up beside her and nudging her gently. 

"Just watching," Lexa said. "Everyone looks so happy."

" _Und du?_ " Luna asked. " _Bist du nicht auch glücklich?_ "

" _Ich habe dass nicht gesagt,_ " Lexa said, immediately defensive. 

"You think I can't see it in your eyes?" Luna asked. "You are waiting for... what is the expression? The other shoe to fall?"

"Drop," Lexa said. "I guess I am."

"Why?"

" _Mein Vater._ " Luna cocked her head, silently questioning. "He may come."

"So?"

"My father is the destroyer of fun," Lexa said. "He's like a black cloud."

"You let him be."

"I don't—" She stopped at Luna's look. "I don't mean to."

"You borrow trouble. Just go enjoy. What happens when he comes..." Luna shrugged, lifting her hands and letting them fall. "You can't stop it." She took her hand, squeezed it. " _Dein Liebling sucht dich._ "

Lexa followed where Luna was pointing, and yes, it did look like Clarke was looking for her. So she grabbed her camera went to join her. She took pictures of people in various combinations, candids and posed photos of friend groups and family groups, and for a little while she actually managed to forget the looming possibility of his presence.

She felt him before she saw or heard him. It was as if the entire energy of the party changed, and her muscles tensed even before he said her name. 

"Lexa."

She turned slowly to look at him, trying to keep her face neutral, trying to ignore the fact that suddenly all eyes were on them. She stayed where she was, forced him to approach her. Let _him_ move for once. 

"I brought you something." He held out a thick book and she reached out to take it. She flipped it open and nearly dropped it. It was a photo album, and on the very first page was a picture of her mother, smiling at the camera from a hospital bed... but not the one from the end. The one from the beginning. _Her_ beginning. "That was the day you were born," he said, as if it required explanation. "It's not much, I know, but... it's what I had. It's what I could find."

"Thank you," Lexa said, her voice a choked whisper, and everyone really _was_ staring now. Clarke pushed herself up from where she had sprawled on a blanket and came over, resting a hand lightly on the small of her back. She looked down at what Lexa held and her eyes went wide.

"Is this what I think it is?" she asked. Lexa nodded. "Oh my god!" Clarke bounced up on her toes and wrapped her arms around Lexa's waist, squeezing. "You need to show me _right now_."

Lexa glanced at her father, and he nodded. Not that she needed his permission, but he was giving it anyway. "Thank you," she said. She let herself be pulled over to the blanket, where far more people than she was really comfortable with crowded around to see pictures of her when she was young.

Thankfully, there wasn't anything too embarrassing, and she was able to keep her emotions mostly in check, even as her fingers occasionally lingered on the pages where there were pictures of her mother. 

"Look at little baby surfer Lexa!" Octavia said when they got to a picture of her balanced on a surfboard that wasn't even in the water. "You were so cute!"

"What happened?" Anya teased. 

Aden wormed his way into the group, and Lexa put her arm around him as he settled against her side, taking comfort from it somehow just as she took comfort from Clarke pressed against her other side. 

"Are there any pictures of us?" Luna asked. She had gone to say hello to Captain Woods, who had either actually remembered her, or done a good enough impression of remembering that he'd fooled Lexa. She thought he might even have almost cracked a smile at her, although it might just have been a trick of the light.

"I don't think so," Lexa said. "I don't remember him ever taking any."

"My mother might have," Luna said. "I'll ask."

"Yes," Clarke said. "Please ask. I want all of the baby Lexa pictures." 

Lexa rolled her eyes and kissed the angle of her jaw. "I'm happy to report that pictures of my awkward teenage years do not exist."

Raven snorted. "Yeah, I bet you were just so awkward," she said. "You were probably one of those people who managed to get through middle school without ever being completely funny-looking."

"I don't remember," Lexa admitted. Then she heard her father talking to some of the other adults – parents, she supposed, as everyone here but Aden (and Vera) was technically an adult. 

"I had to do something with her," she heard him saying, and she guessed that maybe he was talking about how she'd gotten involved in Tae Kwon Do. It would make sense, if it had come up with Luna. "She was angry all the time, and my parents couldn't handle it. They had had enough."

She felt as if a bucket of ice water had been dumped over her, and she straightened, looking over at him. "Is that why?" she asked. "Is that why you came back?"

"Lexa," he said. "I don't think—"

She stood up, and so did he, and they were facing off with everyone else around them and she could tell that he wanted her to shut up, to not say anything, to just let this go. But she wasn't going to. Not this time. Especially not when she didn't know what _this_ was... except she had a sinking feeling that it was the truth – the real truth – for the first time.

"You told me that you came back because you realized that that's what Mom would have wanted," she said. "You told me that you knew she wouldn't want me grow up without either of my parents. But that's not really it, is it? You didn't come back because you had a change of heart and realized that you wanted me after all." She swallowed back the tears that rose. "You came back because your parents _didn't_."

"Lexa," he repeated. "That's enough."

"No," she said. "It's not. If you're willing to tell _them_ , then don't you think maybe you should be willing to tell _me_?" 

"This isn't the time," he said. "I shouldn't have said anything."

"But you did. So now you can say it to my face instead of whispering it behind my back. Just tell me the truth. Just this once."

He sighed, rubbed one hand over his head before letting it drop. "If it hadn't already been the end of the school year," he said, "you would have gotten expelled. From elementary school. You were angry, and fighting all the time. I couldn't ask them to deal with that. So yes, I came back, because they were at their wits' end, and something needed to be done."

"So you only took me with you because you had no other choice," Lexa said.

His silence was answer enough.

She hadn't noticed that everyone else had started to stand while they were talking, that Clarke was gripping her hand so hard that her bones grated together, that Aden had edged his shoulder in front of her as if he could physically shield her from this. She hadn't noticed that Anya was watching her father with crossed arms and cold eyes. She hadn't noticed Luna shaking her head, her mouth hanging slightly open like she couldn't believe what she was hearing. She hadn't noticed Octavia's set jaw, Lincoln's tensed shoulders. She hadn't noticed any of it until she and her father stood on opposite sides of a line that had been drawn... and everyone was on her side, and her father stood alone.

It was Raven who stepped forward, who crossed the line, squaring off against her father.

"You need to go," she said, so close that he actually took a step back.

"This doesn't concern—" he started, but Raven shook her head hard, and he actually stopped.

"Yeah," she said, "it does." 

"I'm her father," he said. "Who—"

Raven spread her feet and put her hands on her hips. "You may be her father," she said, "but we're her family. Now go."


	141. Clarke

Clarke looked from Lexa's father to Raven and then to Lexa, whose face was unreadable. She didn't know whether to step in and try to intervene, or whether to let this play out however it was going to. She was a little surprised that it was Raven, out of everyone, who had been the one to get in Captain Woods' face, but maybe it wasn't all that surprising. Of all of them, she was probably the one who most understood what it was like to deal with a parent who treated you like shit at every turn.

"Lexa," her father said. "Are you going to let her speak for you?"

Clarke felt Lexa's hand tighten in her grip, but she still couldn't tell what was going on in her head. She squeezed back, and Lexa's eyes flicked to her, just for a second, before she gently extricated her hand from Clarke's grasp. 

"She has a point," Lexa said, stepping forward to stand level with Raven. "I think you should go."

"You won't be able to hide behind other people out in the real world," Captain Woods said. "If you hope to be successful, you're going to have to learn to stand on your own and speak for yourself."

There was a silence as if the entire group held their collective breath, and Clarke could sense that the other adults – all of the parents present – were getting edgy, like they were trying to figure out whether they needed to get involved. 

Then Lexa laughed. It was a soft, bitter sound, but it was a laugh. "What, exactly, do you think that I've been doing for my entire life," she asked, "if not standing on my own?"

Captain Woods' frown deepened. "If you want to talk, we can talk," he said. "But not here. Not in front of everyone."

For a second Clarke thought that Lexa might force the issue, that she might insist on having whatever conversation that they were going to have with everyone present as a witness. But then her shoulders dropped slightly and her chin tipped into the faintest of nods. It looked like Lexa was signaling defeat.

As they started to walk away, Clarke reached out and caught her hand and held on. If Lexa really wanted to do this alone, she would let her... but if she could be, Clarke wanted to be there, because she would be the one picking up the pieces later, dealing with the fallout, and she wanted to have some idea of what weapons were being used for her love's destruction. 

Lexa looked over at her, and they held an entire conversation without words. It didn't last more than a couple of seconds, but Lexa didn't let go. When her father finally stopped and turned to face her, he blinked, Clarke assumed in surprise to find her still there. He looked ready to question it, or maybe to try to command her away, but there was something forbidding in Lexa's gaze, and he wisely kept his mouth shut... at least about her.

The silence stretched, and it was Lexa who finally broke it. "Do you love me?" she asked, and her voice was steady but Clarke could hear the slightest edge of a plea in her tone. She wondered if Captain Woods would hear it too, or if he was as oblivious to that as he was to everything else about his daughter. 

He heaved a sigh, and Clarke got the distinct impression that he was fighting the urge to roll his eyes. "Lexa, you're better than that kind of sentimentality," he said. "Needing reassurance of your own value is a weakness. If you can't find all of the validation you need within yourself, then you've already lost."

What he didn't say, explicitly or implicitly, was yes.

Lexa nodded, again just that single dip of her chin. "Then there's nothing more to say." She held out the photo album that he'd given her, which Clarke had somehow failed to notice she was still holding. "You can take this back."

He shook his head. "That's for you," he said. "I brought it for you to keep."

"Because you're above that kind of sentimentality," Lexa said. She looked down at the book, then curled her arm to hold it against her chest. "Fine." She looked back up at him, and there was nothing in her eyes, and it was possibly the most terrifying thing Clarke had ever seen. Everything that made Lexa Lexa was gone, leaving behind the shell of a girl who looked like the one that she loved more than anything and anyone, but who felt like a gaping void at her side.

"I need you to go," Lexa said. "Not just from here, but from my life. Maybe just for now. Maybe forever. I can't keep doing this. I can't keep tearing myself apart looking for something from someone who is incapable of giving it. I don't know whether you ever wanted me or if I was an accident that my mother insisted on keeping and you cared enough about her to let her do it, but... I'm setting you free. You are absolved of any and all obligation to be my father."

She let go of Clarke's hand to reach into her pocket and pull out her keys, sliding off the ones for her car and offering them to her father. Or... not her father, apparently, anymore. To Titus, then. "These are yours," she said. 

Titus just stared at her like he couldn't believe what he was seeing and hearing, like he couldn't understand how a lifetime's worth of emotional distance could have led them to this point. "The car is yours," he said finally. "It's registered in your name."

"You can change that."

"Lexa."

"I'll get my own insurance. Pay for school myself. I'll probably have to fight with the school about it, but I'll figure it out." 

"Lexa, you're being ridiculous," Captain Woods said. "Melodramatic. If you want to be treated like an adult, then you need to act like one."

Lexa quirked an eyebrow. "How am I not acting like an adult?" she asked. "I'm telling you that I am willing to take on all of the responsibilities of being an adult so that you don't have to fulfill any of the obligations of being a parent anymore. If I was saying it just to manipulate you, then sure, you could call it being melodramatic. But I'm not. I'm absolutely serious. I don't want you in my life anymore. I want you to go, and I don't want you to contact me again. If I change my mind in the future, I'll let you know."

"I'm not going to do that," Titus said. 

"Yes, you will," Lexa said. "If you contact me, I will ignore it. I am done letting you tear me apart for being human. I am done trying to make myself into the person that you want me to be, because that person isn't a person at all. I have a family now. I don't need you anymore."

He stared at her for a long time, and then he just shook his head. "As long as you continue to do well in school," he said, "I will continue to support you. That is the arrangement that we made, and I will keep up my end of it as long as you keep up yours."

Lexa seemed to consider this for a moment, and then nodded. 

He looked like he was going to say something more, but then he just turned and walked away. Clarke watched him go, and then looked up at Lexa, afraid of what she would see. She had absolutely believed every word that had come out of her mouth, even in that chilling, detached tone in which they'd been delivered. She especially believed that Lexa meant it, and that she could and would cut her father from her life.

But at what cost? Her father had wanted her heartless, cold, unfeeling, and he'd finally gotten it just then, and still he'd accused her of not being what he wanted. And she'd said that she had a family, that she didn't need him, but did she really believe it? 

Lexa turned and looked back at her, and for a second Clarke found herself staring into that void, and she felt her insides turn to ice. She reached up and touched Lexa's cheek, and Lexa blinked, and all of the light and warmth flooded back into her face, and Clarke found her eyes filling with tears of relief. She pushed up on her toes and kissed her. "I love you."

Lexa wrapped her arms around Clarke and pulled her close. "I know," she said.

"That doesn't make you weak," Clarke said. "Needing to be loved, that doesn't—"

Lexa kissed her again, softly, to stop her. "I know," she repeated. "And I love you too." She brushed the tears off Clarke's cheeks with gentle fingers and hugged her again until both of their breathing evened out a bit. "Let's go back to the party," she said, "if I haven't ruined it."

"You didn't do anything wrong," Clarke said, holding on to her so that she couldn't walk away. 

"I could have let it go," Lexa said. "I could have confronted him later instead of in the middle of everything." She toyed with the ends of Clarke's hair, wrapping a lock around her finger and then letting it go. "I'm glad I didn't."

Clarke looked at her, not sure if she should ask why, or just wait to see if Lexa would volunteer it. 

Lexa smiled at her. "I know who my real family is now."

Clarke smiled back. "I guess you do," she said. She looped her arm through Lexa's as they walked back to where everyone was gathered, definitely more subdued now than they had been before, like they'd all been waiting to see how things had played out. 

"He's gone," Lexa said, to answer everyone's unspoken question.

"Do I need to send my robot army after him to kick his ass?" Raven asked. "Because I am 100% ready to do so. Just say the word."

Lexa laughed, but this time it was a real laugh. "He's not worth the spare parts you might need for repairs," she said. "You can tell your robot army to stand down."

"Oh good," Raven said, "because the army is actually only one robot, and really it's less of a robot and more of a drone, but I am pretty sure that I could rig up a net under it and fly it over him and have it release the net and drop some dog poo or something on his head." She was smirking, and this time everyone laughed.

"I'll keep that in mind," Lexa said. "But no. It's... fine. Let's just get back to having a good time. I, for one, definitely need some dessert." 

"'Stitch is troubled,'" Anya quipped.

"Exactly," Lexa said. She looked at Clarke. "Coming?"

"I'll be right there," Clarke said. Lexa nodded and went to go find something sweet, and Clarke went over to where her mother was sitting, baby Veelu in her carrier next to her, sucking on a pacifier and apparently half asleep. Clarke sat down on her other side, and then threw her arms around her and hugged her hard. 

Her mother hugged her back, stroking her hair. "Everything okay?" she asked quietly. 

"Yes," Clarke said. "I mean... I guess as okay as it'll ever be." She sat back. "Lexa told him to go, and to not contact her again."

Abby's eyes widened. "Do you think she meant it?"

"I know she did," Clarke said. "Things have never really been good between them. I think this was just the last straw. She..." She swallowed, not sure if it was really her business to tell, but she had to. "She asked if he loved her. Mom, he didn't say yes."

Her mother's lips pressed together into a thin line and her eyes narrowed. For a second Clarke thought that she might actually get up and try to go after him, to give him a piece of her mind, and Clarke put her hand on her mother's arm and squeezed to stop her from doing anything that she might regret later... but probably wouldn't.

"We'll take care of her," Clarke said. "Like Raven said, we're her family. She doesn't need him."

"Being on your own at such a young age isn't easy," her mother told her. "There's a lot of things that you might not think about. Bills, groceries..."

"He's not cutting her off financially," Clarke said, "as long as she keeps her grades up. I'm not sure if he realizes how serious she really was about not wanting anything to do with him anymore. I guess he'll figure it out."

Abby's frown deepened. "If things... if they don't work out, if things get worse, I need you to promise that you'll tell me," she said. "I'm not going to let her suffer just because that man can't see what an amazing young woman his daughter is."

"I promise," Clarke said. She knew that if it came to it, her mother would do everything that she could – everything that Lexa would allow – to take care of her. Even if somehow things didn't work out between them, her mother would still look out for Lexa, just like she would look out for Octavia, and now Raven and probably Anya too, if it came down to it, although Anya already had a surplus of parents, it would seem, all of whom seemed to be pretty supportive.

"Thank you," Abby said. "I know how much she means to you."

Clarke nodded. "I'm going to go make sure she's okay."

"Of course."

Clarke found Lexa under the pavilion with a brownie in her hand. She smiled when she saw Clarke, but it was a little bit shaky. "What's wrong?"

"Everyone is giving me Concerned Looks," Lexa said, and Clarke could hear the capital letters. "Not that I don't understand, and not that I don't appreciate it, but I don't want to deal with their concern. I don't want to have to reassure them that I'm okay, because right now I'm only just barely clinging to that, and I _really_ don't want to get tipped over the edge."

"Is there anything I can do?" Clarke asked, because she absolutely understood what Lexa was saying. It was part of the reason that she had pushed people away after her father died; she could manage to be okay as long as people weren't constantly asking her if she was, or telling her how sorry they were. And this wasn't exactly dissimilar, was it? Lexa had just lost her father, too, except her loss was by choice, and revocable at some point in the future if she wished. 

"Just act normal," Lexa said. "I can't erase what happened. I can't take it back. But if we move forward as if it didn't happen, or at least as if it was just a passing rain shower and the rest of the afternoon will be blue skies and sun, maybe everyone else will play along."

Clarke nodded. "Maybe we could get some kind of game going or something," she said. "Someone must have brought a Frisbee, right? There's no rules against playing Frisbee here, are there?"

"Not that I know of," Lexa said, "as long as we don't hit any innocent bystanders."

"My aim is maybe not the best," Clarke admitted, "but I will do my best not to cause anyone any grievous bodily harm." 

"I guess we'll have to take it," Lexa said, and wrapped an arm around Clarke to pull her closer and kiss her lightly. "Thank you," she said softly. 

"You're welcome," Clarke said, even though she wasn't actually completely sure what she was being thanked for. It didn't really matter, she figured. They headed back toward everyone, and Lincoln had, in fact, brought along a Frisbee, so they got a game going, only it turned out that most of them had terrible aim and they spent half their time running to pick the thing up wherever it had landed, so eventually they gave up and turned it into a game of freeze tag, made more interesting by the fact that Raven, instead of trying to run around herself, sent her drone (which really did exist) in as her proxy. After a couple of bruising collisions, she found a streamer that she could rig up underneath it, so that you were tagged when the streamer hit you rather than the actual drone itself.

When the end of time they had reserved the pavilion for drew close, they had to stop the game to clean everything up. They were all flush-cheeked and breathless, grass-stained and grinning, and once everything was packed up they started to say goodbyes, which involved a lot of hugging even from those who might not be natural huggers. Clarke couldn't help noticing that everyone seemed to hold on to Lexa just a little bit tighter and for a little bit longer than they might otherwise, and was a little surprised that Lexa allowed it. 

When they got home, they collapsed into her father's chair, settling themselves so that they were wedged side-by-side. "That was a good day," Lexa said. "In spite of everything. Really just in spite of one thing."

"Kind of a big thing," Clarke said. 

Lexa nodded. "But at the same time, how big of a thing is it really? It wasn't like he was that much of a presence in my life to begin with. Now I just don't have to feel obligated to keep reaching out and trying to fix things that probably aren't possible to fix."

"Do you think you'll ever talk to him again?" Clarke asked.

Lexa shrugged. "I'll probably invite him to graduation," she said. "If he's still paying for it by then."

Clarke nodded, and picked up one of Lexa's hands and kissed her palm. "Have I mentioned that I love you?"

"You might have," Lexa said, her mouth quirking, "but I don't mind hearing it again."

"I love you," Clarke said.

"I love you too," Lexa whispered back.

"You two are gross," Anya said from the kitchen. 

"But you love us anyway," Lexa called back.

"Yeah, yeah," Anya said. "Don't remind me."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, friends! Just wanted to give you a heads up that I am currently without a laptop. As soon as I realized that it wasn't charging I uploaded the next couple of chapters so I would still be able to post on time, but I may be slower than usual to reply to comments. HOPEFULLY it will get fixed tomorrow, but my luck is pretty terrible so we'll see.


	142. Lexa

Lexa pushed open the door to the dojang, not surprised to find that she was the first one here (other than Master Gustus, of course). She'd woken up nervous (and alone – Clarke had actually slept at her own apartment the night before because she had quite a bit of research documentation to go through that she'd ignored over the weekend) and gone for a run, but even that hadn't burned off her excess energy. She'd ended up just getting ready and coming here without really looking at the clock first. 

She stuck her head into the office. "I'm guessing it's too late to change my mind?" she asked, forcing a smile. 

"A little bit," Gustus said, smiling back at her. "It'll be fine. I promise." He looked past her. "Where's Aden?"

Her stomach clenched. "Was I supposed to bring him?" she asked. She pulled her phone from the pocket of her bag and looked at it, going so far as to scroll back through her texts, but there was nothing from him or his mother asking her to pick him up this morning. 

"Maybe not," Gustus said. "I had just assumed."

"I'll check." Lexa called Aden's number, hoping that she didn't wake him up, although if he was supposed to be here, he would need to be getting up soon anyway. 

"Hello?" He sounded worried, and Lexa didn't really blame him. She rarely called him; usually if he needed a ride or something he would text her. 

"Hey Aden," she said. "I just wanted to check and make sure that you don't need a ride today."

"Oh. No, it's okay. My mom is bringing me. She's got an appointment."

"Okay." Lexa relaxed a little. 

"Hold on though," Aden said.

"Sure." She could hear him talking, but couldn't make out the words, and a second later he was back. "Mom wanted me to ask if it would be possible for you to bring me home though. Or to the hospital. She might not be done by the time camp is over."

"Of course," Lexa said. "I'll bring you wherever you need to go."

"Thanks." A pause, and then he added, "Mom says thanks for checking."

"Of course," Lexa said again. "I'll see you soon." She hung up, and a few seconds later she had a text from Ms. Wolfe, thanking her again for checking in, and for giving Aden a ride later. She wanted to say that it was nothing, because to her it really wasn't – occasionally a very minor inconvenience because going to Aden's house at certain times of the day meant battling annoying traffic, but nothing more – but she knew that to Aden and his mom it meant a lot. So she just said 'you're welcome'. 

"His mom is bringing him," Lexa told Master Gustus. "I'll bring him home."

"Okay," he said. "Do you want to start getting things set up?"

"Sure," she said, and they went out into the main room to make sure that everything they would need was easily accessible, and things that they didn't want the kids playing with were tucked away. Out of sight, out of mind and all that. 

Lincoln showed up as they were shifting some of the mats, and immediately got to work helping them, and Aden arrived a little bit later and helped finish up. Within minutes of finishing, the campers started to arrive, and Lexa found herself sizing them up, silently assessing how much she was going to hate the next week of her life. Some of the campers were already students of the school, but not all of them. Of those that weren't, they were primarily friends of those that were who were trying camp to see how they liked it before making any kind of commitment to train during the school year. Master Gustus had told her that generally about three quarters of the kids who weren't already students who came to camp ended up signing up to train, and of that three quarters, half were still around six months later. So apparently it was a system that worked fairly well.

Lincoln came over and nudged her. "If you keep looking at them like that, you might scare them off," he teased.

"Looking at them like what?" she asked. She hadn't realized her expression was anything but neutral. She'd even been trying for pleasant, but had apparently missed the mark. 

"Like they're bugs that you want to squash," Lincoln said. 

"Only a few of them," Lexa replied, her eyes trailing over to a pair of students who had been training for years and would likely be testing for their black belts within the next six months. Individually, they were somewhat tolerable, if a bit whiny. Together, it was as if they tried to outdo each other in coming up with ways to step on her last nerve. 

"We'll keep them separated as best we can," Lincoln said, following her gaze. "If all else fails, we'll pair one of them up with Aden."

"And here I thought you liked the kid," Lexa replied, smirking at him. Lincoln grinned back. 

Once the rush of drop-offs was done, they got the kids settled on the mats and Master Gustus went over what their daily schedule would be like, what the rules and expectations were, and all of the other housekeeping type things. When that was done, they started with some games and then went into some more formal training. Lexa was surprised by how fast the time passed, and by the fact that it felt like they'd only just started the day when Gustus said that it was time for lunch (which the kids were required to bring packed from home). Since the weather was nice, they headed outside to eat, spreading out a few blankets on the ground for a picnic. After lunch they headed over to a local park, where Lincoln organized a game of soccer and Lexa watched as some of the other kids took to the swings and slides and monkey bars. 

By the end of the day she was tired (and slightly sunburnt – she'd only remembered sunscreen after she noticed that some of the kids were starting to turn pink) but relieved that the day had gone relatively smoothly. If the rest of the days went this well, she might not end up regretting this after all. She watched as the last kid was picked up, and they spent a little while getting things set up for the next day and discussing what activities they might want to do. 

"I'm going to assume I won't see any of you tonight," Master Gustus said. "Although of course you're welcome to come train if you want to, since I know that you didn't actually get to do much work on your own skills today." 

"I'll come if Anya does," Lexa said. 

"All right," Gustus said. "If not, I'll see you tomorrow."

They went out to their cars, and Lincoln waved as he pulled out of the parking lot. Aden climbed into the passenger's seat and fastened his seatbelt. "Home or hospital?" Lexa asked. 

"Home," he said. "I don't like seeing her at the hospital." He'd been the perfect picture of a Tae Kwon Do student and assistant instructor all day, setting a good example for the others and helping whenever and wherever needed, but now he seemed to deflate. 

"Okay," Lexa said. "Do you mind if we make a quick stop on the way?"

He shook his head. 

Lexa reached over and squeezed the back of his neck gently. She didn't say anything because she didn't know what to say, and honestly she felt like it was more important to give him the space to do the talking himself if he wanted to. He looked over at her and smiled, but didn't say anything. She put the car into reverse and backed out of the parking space, then headed in the direction of his house... with a slight detour to the frozen yogurt place that they both loved. 

"You don't—" he started. 

"After six hours of Jack and Zach?" She raised an eyebrow. "Yes, I do." 

He smiled crookedly and nodded. He remained quiet while they ate, and all the way home. Before he could get out of the car, Lexa reached over to touch his arm. "Promise you'll let me know if you need anything," she said. "Anything."

"I promise," he said. He started to push open the door, then hesitated. "Do you think maybe you could stay for a while?" he asked, so softly she almost couldn't understand the words. "Until my mom gets home?"

"Of course," Lexa said. She turned off the car and got out with him. They decided to go see if there were any interesting Pokemon around, and by the time they got back, Aden's mother's car was in the driveway. She could see his shoulders drop, visibly relieved. 

"Thanks for staying," he said softly. 

"Any time," she said. She was startled when he threw his arms around her, the hug almost too quick for her to reciprocate. She watched as he went inside, waving from the door before closing it. She got into her car and drove home, feeling more wrung out from that brief encounter than from six hours of wrangling kids. 

Things continued to go smoothly until Thursday, when she woke up to pouring rain that the forecast showed had no intentions of stopping any time today. She drove to the dojang with a feeling of dread, because what they hell were they going to do with the kids all day if they couldn't take them outside? Thankfully, she quickly discovered that her instructor was prepared for all eventualities. He had a big sheet that he could string up, and had brought a projector that he could hook up to his laptop so that they could watch a movie after lunch. He'd even brought a couple of different movies to choose from, figuring that if the kids at least got a vote there was less likely to be grumbling. 

"This isn't the first rainy day that's ever happened in the history of camp," he told her, "and it won't be the last. Have a little faith that I know what I'm doing." He smiled at her, and she smiled sheepishly back. 

And he was right. He did know what he was doing, and the day went just as well as all of the others. Some of the kids even seemed relieved to just be able to lay back and relax for a couple of hours, and there was very little complaining about the movie that was democratically chosen. (Really, it was just Jack and Zach, and when were they _not_ complaining about something? Lexa had come to the conclusion that the absolute worst age for kids was between eleven and thirteen, and they were doing absolutely nothing to disprove that.) 

Friday flew by in a flurry of games and little awards that were given to everyone. They'd had to make up a few categories to make sure that there was something that each camper got recognized for, but that had been part of the fun. Some of the kids would be back the next week, but not all of them. Lexa was surprised when some of the kids came up to hug her before they left... but maybe it wasn't that surprising, because most of the ones that did were the girls, who had kind of gravitated toward her the entire time, since she was the only female counselor (or whatever they were calling themselves) there. She hugged them back, and said that she hoped that she would see them all again... and meant it. 

Master Gustus took them out for lunch once the last kid was gone, a little bonus for their hard work during the week. They ended up using the meal to talk about their plans for the upcoming week, things that they were going to repeat and things that could use some tweaking, and also about the big trip that was open to all of the campers as well as any other student of the dojang, which would happen on the following Saturday. They'd decided on a nearby amusement park, and were actively recruiting parents as chaperones so that for the most part their obligation to actually supervise would be limited. On past trips Gustus had found that it was best if there were no more than two or three kids were adult, because anything beyond that tended to result in people getting disgruntled when they were either dragged along to do things that they didn't want to do, or weren't able to do the things that they did want because the others in their group outvoted them. With smaller groups, it was far more likely that they could find matches in how adventurous people were, leading to a much happier experience all around.

"You're welcome to invite Clarke," Master Gustus told her. 

"She's not—" Lexa started, but stopped when he shook his head.

"She trained with us once, and she qualifies as a Responsible Adult," he said. "If she wants to come, she can come." He leaned in closer and added, "If you're lucky, you'll end up without a group and the two of you can just enjoy the day." 

"How likely is that?" she asked.

"Honestly? We've got quite a few chaperones, so it seems like the odds are pretty good. Or worst case scenario, you might have a group of one – Aden." 

"He doesn't even really count," Lexa said. 

"Exactly. It might not work out that way, but with the numbers I've got now, things are looking pretty good. Most parents are going to want to supervise their own kids anyway, and then they end up with their kids' friends. Things usually have a way of sorting themselves out."

"I'll ask her," Lexa said. She honestly wasn't sure what Clarke's feelings were about amusement parks in general; somehow the subject had never come up... in large part because Lexa herself had very little firsthand experience with them. It hadn't actually been something that was ever high on her father's list of things to do with her. She'd gone to one with Costia once, but Costia had mostly stuck to the smaller rides that kept them near to the ground. She'd blamed it on an unsettled stomach – too much spinning after eating fried dough was a recipe for disaster, she'd claimed. Lexa suspected, though, that she was actually afraid of heights, and just unwilling to admit it. 

Later that evening Clarke came over, dumping herself onto the couch next to Lexa and crawling half into her lap. "How was your day?" she asked. 

"It was pretty good," Lexa said, "we had a lot of fun with the awards for the kids. How was yours?"

"Ugh," Clarke said. "I spent the entire day staring at a computer screen, and I swear by the end I was starting to go cross-eyed." She looked at Lexa with both eyes pointed toward her nose to demonstrate. 

Lexa laughed and kissed her on each eyelid. "You're done soon, though, aren't you?"

"Next week is my last week," Clarke said. "She offered to keep me on for longer, but with school starting back up soon, I decided that I wanted to have a little bit of time to actually just relax and enjoy summer break." 

"Sounds good to me," Lexa said. "Speaking of which – Master Gustus told me that I could invite you on our amusement part trip. We might—"

"I'm in," Clarke said immediately. 

"—end up having to be chaperones, though, so... keep that in mind before making a decision," Lexa finished, fighting back a laugh.

"I'm in," Clarke repeated. "I was jealous when Octavia started talking about it."

"Okay," Lexa said. "I'll let him know."

"Awesome," Clarke said, tucking herself closer against Lexa. "I hope you like rollercoasters."

"I've never been on one," Lexa admitted. "Unless you're referring to the emotional variety."

Clarke snorted. "I'm not. No one likes those, and if they do, I'm really not sure what to say. Seriously? You've never been on a rollercoaster?"

"Nope."

Clarke grinned. "Oh," she said, rubbing her hands together. "This is going to be so much fun."


	143. Clarke

Clarke cradled her coffee between both hands as they pulled into the parking lot of an elementary school not far from Lexa's dojang, the designated meeting place for the trip because the dojang's parking lot wasn't big enough to accommodate the charter bus that would take them to the amusement park. They parked, and Lexa came around to open her door for her, offering her a hand out which she grumblingly took. 

"It's way too early for this," she said, as two of the younger kids greeted each other with ear-piercing shrieks. 

Lexa smiled indulgently at her and squeezed her hand before letting go. "The caffeine will kick in soon," she reassured her. Then her smile faltered. "Didn't you sleep last night?"

"Not much," Clarke admitted. 

"You should have woken me," Lexa said. 

Clarke shook her head. "I wanted at least one of us to be well-rested for this," she said. "And you were _out_." Which was a rare enough thing (although becoming more common, and the fact that Lexa's nightmares actually seemed to be subsiding somewhat felt like a cause for celebration). "Anyway, I used my time wisely."

Lexa raised an eyebrow, but didn't get the chance to ask because suddenly she was surrounded by tween girls who seemed to have something _very important_ that they needed to tell her _right now_.

Clarke saw Aden's mother's car pull into the lot, and he got out, hooking a small bag over one shoulder. Which reminded her to pull her and Lexa's bag out of the back seat. Along with the amusement park there was a water park, and it was supposed to get pretty hot, so they'd made sure to pack bathing suits. Aden waved to his mom as she pulled away, and then waved to Clarke when he saw her, walking over. 

"Lexa told me you were coming," he said. "She said that you would ride all of the rollercoasters with me."

Clarke raised an eyebrow. "Oh, she thinks she's getting out of it?" she asked. "Not likely."

Aden shrugged. "She didn't say that. She just said that you liked rollercoasters so she was sure that if I wanted to go on them you would go with me."

"We'll _both_ go with you," Clarke said. "Unless it turns out that she really hates them, in which case yes, I will go on them with you."

"Okay," he said. "Cool."

When Lexa had disentangled herself from the girls, they went to check in with Gustus, letting him know that they were there, and Lexa stepped in to help keep things organized. Clarke was surprised with how smoothly things actually went; it helped that there seemed to be a lot of parents along for the trip as well, and they were mostly doing a good job of wrangling their own children.

Once everyone was on the bus, they were on their way. Master Gustus went over the rules of the park, and reminded them that they were there representing his school, and that he expected them to show the same respect for themselves, other people, and the park as they would at the dojang. He then went over who was assigned to which chaperone, and as Lexa had said he'd predicted, their group was just the two of them and Aden. 

Clarke nudged Lexa gently, flashing a smile at her. 

Lexa smiled back. "I knew," she murmured. "He told me last night."

"Still, kind of a relief."

"Definitely," Lexa agreed. 

The ride to the park wasn't too long, about an hour, which was good because many of the kids were pretty amped up, even this early in the morning, and the clamor of all of their voices (and the hissing of the chaperones trying to shush them) made Clarke wish that she'd brought earplugs. By the time they arrived at the park, though, the coffee had started to work its magic. They were hustled through a special gate for large groups and within minutes they were free in the park, which was only just opening.

"Where to first?" Lexa asked. 

"What do you think?" Clarke asked Aden. "They say that the best time to hit up Flight of Fear is first thing in the morning, because otherwise the lines get long, but I was thinking maybe we should start with Intimidator 305."

"No," Lexa said firmly. "I am _not_ starting the day on anything with the words 'fear' or 'intimidator' in the name. Not a chance."

Clarke gave her her best wide-eyed innocent look. "You're not _scared_ , are you?" she teased. 

"It's called Flight of _Fear_ ," Lexa countered. "I'm pretty sure that I'm supposed to be scared."

"What about Dominator?" Aden suggested. "You can start the day by dominating it." He was smiling, not quite a grin but a bigger smile than they had seen from him lately (which wasn't exactly surprising given what was going on in his life). 

"Fine," Lexa finally conceded. "Dominator it is." She didn't look entirely convinced that this was a great idea, but she had clearly resigned herself to stoicism. Clarke was honestly surprised that she was allowing herself to express any doubt at all; usually she refused to let on that she was anything but completely tough and fearless. 

"Mind if we join you?" 

Clarke turned to see Anya with a young teenage girl, probably around Aden's age, in tow. The girl looked about as enthusiastic as Lexa sounded, her features set in a frown. "I don't mind," Clarke said. 

"Of course not," Lexa added. "Clarke, this is Tris," she said, introducing the girl. "Tris, this is my girlfriend Clarke."

Clarke thought she saw the girl's eyes widen just slightly, but it actually seemed to put her a little more at ease somehow. "Cool," she said. "Hi."

"Hi," Clarke said. "I think it's this way." She pointed, and they started walking. When they got to the ride, the line wasn't long yet, and they were able to practically walk right on. They didn't have to stop until they were nearly at the top of the steps. Lexa had put on her mask of, 'I'm fine, totally fine, why would I not be fine?' and Clarke let her wear it, because she was confident that once she'd actually gotten to the end of the ride, she _would_ be fine. 

She glanced behind her and saw that Tris' jaw was set so hard she could see the muscles twitching. She was staring straight ahead but didn't seem to be seeing anything. She looked at Anya, who stood slightly behind her and inclined her head in Tris' direction. 

Anya glanced over at her and nodded to Clarke, then put her hand lightly on the girl's shoulder, leaning down to say something that Clarke didn't catch as the next train pulled into the little station with a clatter. They were allowed the rest of the way up the stairs and lined up in the corrals for the cars. They would be on the next train, and now Lexa looked ever-so-slightly pale. 

"You're going to love it," Clarke said. "I promise. It's like flying."

"Have I ever once expressed to you that I had any desire to fly?" Lexa asked, but her eyes were bright like she was trying not to smile. 

"Everyone wants to fly," Clarke countered. "I'm pretty sure that's a scientific fact."

"I'm questioning where you're getting your science from," Lexa replied. 

"The internet, obviously," Clarke said. "Everything you read on the internet is true."

"Oh really? Where did you hear that?"

"On the internet. Duh." 

Lexa laughed, but it had the effect that Clarke wanted. As they loaded onto the train and pulled down their restraints, she didn't seem to be quite as nervous anymore. Anya and Tris were in the row behind them, but Clarke couldn't quite manage to turn around to look at them and see how the girl was doing.

As the train moved forward, Clarke thought she heard Tris squeak as they dipped down a tiny hill, and she was absolutely sure that she heard her muttering, "Oh shit oh shit oh shit," all the way up the lift hill. A yelp on the first little drop... and then she stopped paying attention because she was too busy enjoying the ride. 

When they got to the end, they shuffled off the train, and she looked over to see that Aden was grinning, and Lexa, although slightly wide-eyed, was smiling too. "Pretty good, huh?" she asked, heading down the steps that would take them back to the ground.

"Pretty good," she agreed. 

"Pretty good?" A voice from behind them, and Clarke looked and saw that it was Tris. "That was _awesome_! I want to do it again!"

Anya laughed. "Right now, or later?"

"Now!" Tris said. 

"Okay," Anya said. "You guys can go if you want to." 

Clarke looked at Aden and Lexa, and Lexa looked at the line. "It's still pretty short," she said. "We could ride again."

"I don't mind," Aden said. So they all got back in line and rode again, and after the second time around, any nervousness that Lexa had had was completely gone, and they moved on to the next coaster, and the next, and the next...

Until they got to the one that was called the Intimidator 305. The line was longer than it had been for any of the others, and it gave them all plenty of time – maybe too much time – to look at their lives and their choices, and to question whether this was really a good one.

When they were finally on the train, Clarke reached over and held on to Lexa's hand as they climbed up... and up... and up... for what felt like an interminable length of time. Then she had to let go to hold on to the bar in front of them as they plunged almost straight down for what also felt like an eternity, but was actually probably only about five or six seconds. After that the rest of the coaster was a blur, and when they climbed out at the other end she had to grab Lexa's elbow to keep her upright as her knees wobbled.

"Never again," she hissed. "Who the hell thinks that's fun? That is _not_ fun."

Aden looked back and forth between them, clearly concerned. 

"It's all right," Lexa reassured him. "Just not my favorite. I'll take being flipped upside down a half dozen times over that any day."

"Do you want to do the Anaconda, then?" he asked. "That's another inversion one."

"Okay," Lexa agreed, and they made their way toward it, slowly until Lexa had her legs back under her, and then they got into the line, shuffling along. 

After that, they decided to take a break from rollercoasters for a little bit to find some food, and then they rode a few of the other rides that were a little tamer while their lunch settled. After they got off the giant swings, Tris looked at Anya. "Could we maybe check out the water park?" she asked. "It's getting hot."

"I think that sounds like a great idea," Anya said. "Any objections?" No one had any, so they headed for that area of the park, renting a big locker to cram all of their stuff into once they had changed. It took a second for Clarke to figure out why both of the teenagers were sort of frozen in place, staring at Lexa, when she turned her back to shove her bag inside. 

"That is _so cool_ ," Tris said. "Can I touch it?"

Lexa laughed. "Go ahead," she said, rolling her eyes a little at Clarke as Tris traced a finger over the designs down her spine. "Sometimes I forget it's there," she said when the girl's curiosity had been satisfied. 

"Me too," Clarke said. "I'm so used to it now."

They decided to spend the money to rent tubes instead of having to wait for them to be available for each slide, which meant that they were able to get through the lines faster. They spent hours at the water park, going on their favorite ones over and over again, and then chilling at the wave pool when they got tired of climbing stairs. They didn't go back to change into regular clothes until the heat was starting to abate slightly, and they were starting to get hungry again.

After they'd eaten, they decided to split up, with Anya taking Tris back to ride the Dominator as many times as she wanted, and Clarke and Aden dragging Lexa along to ride the rollercoasters that they hadn't gotten to yet. 

"We've got time for maybe two more," Lexa said, glancing at her phone. "You can each pick one that you want to do again."

"Who made you the boss?" Aden asked, so deadpan that it took them both a second to realize that he was joking. 

"I'm pretty sure Master Gustus did, actually," Lexa said, nudging him hard enough that he rocked on his feet, and then he nudged back, and they scuffled a little playfully. "So what do you want to do again?"

"Anaconda," he decided, so they headed back to it and got in line. After that Clarke decided to end the day where they started, back at the Dominator, and Tris and Anya were there, and Anya held up both hands, all of her fingers extended on one, and her thumb on the other. Clarke suppressed a laugh. Six times.

"She's a girl who knows what she wants," Clarke said softly to her. "You've got to admire that kind of dedication, right?"

"I'm going to be dreaming of this coaster for a week," Anya grumbled, but she didn't actually sound all that unhappy about it. Clarke wasn't entirely sure, but she got the feeling that maybe Anya's relationship to Tris was a little like Lexa's to Aden... or might become that after today. Maybe she would ask later, if she thought about it.

"We should head back to the bus," Clarke said when they got off. "It's almost time."

They made their way back to the parking lot, where Master Gustus was checking people off as they climbed onto the bus. He smiled at them when he saw them. "Have a good day?" he asked.

"I rode one of the rollercoasters nine times," Tris announced proudly. 

"We rode all of the rollercoasters," Aden said. "Even the baby one, because it didn't seem right to do all but one of them."

"I only felt slightly ridiculous," Lexa joked, "and people didn't stare at all."

He laughed. "Good for you," he said. "I'm glad you had a good time."

They got back to their seats, and although at first there was some of the morning's cacophony as the kids talked about what they'd done (and who had thrown up, or almost thrown up), but it quickly died out as exhaustion set in. 

"It was a good day," Clarke said, leaning in against Lexa.

"Yeah, it was," she said, putting her arm around Clarke's shoulders and squeezing. "Thank you for coming with me."

"Thank you for inviting me."

"Always," Lexa said. She turned her head to kiss Clarke's hair, and then let her cheek rest there. Clarke closed her eyes, and let the hum of the bus tires on the pavement lull her into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I did not make up the names of these rollercoasters. They are actual rides at Kings Dominion, an amusement park near Washington DC. (Although I will admit that I actually mixed up its location with another amusement park, and it would actually be about two hours away, but I wasn't going to go back and change all of the rides, and I wasn't going to torture the girls by having them stuck on a bus for two hours, so... let's all just suspend our disbelief, okay? ;-))


	144. Lexa

Lexa closed her eyes, her cheek resting against Clarke's head, and pulled her a little closer, letting the warmth of her body counteract the chill of the air conditioning on the bus. She thought about pulling her stashed hoodie from her bag, but that would involve moving and disturbing Clarke, which was the last thing she wanted to do. So she just cuddled her a little tighter, turning her head to brush her lips against her hair. 

She was vaguely aware of someone walking up the aisle toward the back of the bus, and she cracked an eye open when they stopped, figuring maybe it was Aden, although he was only in the row ahead of them and could just have turned around if he had something to say. It wasn't Aden, though. It was one of the mothers, and her forehead was furrowed and her mouth pinched like she'd just bitten into a lemon. After a second she kept walking.

Lexa suppressed a sigh. It didn't take a genius to figure out what she'd been making faces at. Across the aisle Lincoln had his arm around Octavia and they hadn't been given the stink-eye, so it obviously wasn't distaste for PDA in general... not that this even really qualified, at least in Lexa's book. Maybe it would have been better to let go of Clarke, to prop her up so that she wasn't sleeping on her shoulder, but she refused to be silently bullied. She wasn't doing anything wrong and to change what she was doing would be seen, she was sure, as an admission of guilt. 

She closed her eyes against the rush of tears that filled them, hating that she was affected at all by this. Would there ever come a time when she could just _be_ , without it being a statement? Would a day come when she and Clarke could just act like any other couple, with the amount of affection that they showed to each other in public dictated only by their own comfort levels and not by having to hedge against the possibility of disapproval or worse? 

She hated, too, that it was happening in a place that had always been safe for her... or at least an extension of that place. If Master Gustus knew... 

Lexa tightened her arms around Clarke hard enough that she stirred and shifted, and lifted her head slightly to look at Lexa, blinking slowly. 

"Shh," Lexa murmured. "Go back to sleep."

Lines formed between Clarke's brows, but if she was thinking about pursuing things further, her body had other ideas. Her eyelids sank back down, and she settled again. "I love you," Lexa whispered into her hair. Clarke wrapped her arm over Lexa's stomach, and squeezed, so maybe she wasn't fully asleep after all.

The bus ride home somehow seemed to take twice as long as the ride there had been, and wasn't it usually the other way around? Didn't getting there usually seem to take longer? But maybe that was because of anticipation, and maybe this ride was dragged out by dread. Because she knew that she should – had to – tell Master Gustus, because what were the odds that he wasn't going to hear about it anyway? 

The bus finally pulled into the parking lot, and people filed off quietly, heading for their various cars with muted goodbyes, and promises to see each other in class next week. Lexa hesitated as she passed Master Gustus, and Clarke looked at her curiously. "What's wrong?" she asked.

"Maybe nothing," Lexa said. "Maybe not." She looked at Clarke. "I'm trying to decide if it can wait."

Clarke nodded, maybe not understanding the details but probably understanding the sentiment. Which only made Lexa love her more, and she finally decided fuck it. If someone had a problem with her, with them, than that was _their_ problem, not hers, and she wasn't going to take it on as hers. She had a habit of borrowing trouble, and it was one that she needed to break. Why not start now?

"It can wait," she said. "Let's go home."

"Your place or mine?" Clarke asked. 

"Do you have a preference?" Lexa asked. 

"Yours," Clarke said. "You have a better shower."

Lexa smiled. "All right," she said. "Mine it is."

* * *

After her internship on Tuesday she went straight to the dojang because by the time she got home she would have had to turn back around and leave again in less than half an hour anyway, so it just seemed kind of pointless. Aden had already told her that he didn't need a ride that day. She pulled open the door... and stopped.

In the front window, below where the class schedule was posted, was a new sticker. A rainbow sticker, with two words printed in bold white against the bright colors: Safe Zone. 

"In or out," Master Gustus called from the office. "I'm not paying to air condition the outdoors!" 

She stepped in, and slid off her shoes, tucking them neatly away. She set down her bag and bowed onto the mat, then hesitated at the office door. Master Gustus looked up at her after a second. "Was there something you needed?" he asked, motioning for her to come in.

She sank into the chair across from him, and she could only imagine what he was seeing in her face... or maybe she didn't need to imagine, because maybe what she was feeling was written all over it. Confusion, mostly, but also some anger and a lot of pride, of the fierce, protective variety most often attributed to mother lions. Or was it tigers, or bears? 

_Oh my,_ she thought, and then had to swallow a giggle. 

Master Gustus looked at her, one eyebrow going up. "Everything okay?" he asked.

"You tell me," she said.

His expression grew serious. "You saw the newest addition to the window."

"Yes sir," she said. 

"Good," he said. "I want people to notice."

She didn't know what to say to that. She wanted to ask, but at the same time she was afraid to. Her stomach twisted, its contents churning, and she was glad that she hadn't eaten anything before coming. What was it they said, though, about bravery? It wasn't not being afraid, but being afraid and doing it anyway? "Why?" she finally asked.

"I did some research," Master Gustus said, "over the weekend. And I found some online training. I want to do something in person, but I don't think I'll be able to until school starts up again. I figured the university probably runs something, right?"

"Why?" she asked again, not answering his question because she wasn't actually sure exactly what he was asking. 

He sighed. "On Sunday morning I checked my email, and was a little surprised to find that I had messages from probably half of the parents," he said. "It took me a minute to figure out why. And then I got angry."

Lexa frowned. " _Why?_ " she asked, hitting the word hard because now she didn't just want to know, she _needed_ to. Because just like it hadn't been hard to guess why the woman on the bus had stopped on her trek to the back of the bus to stare – or glare – at her, it wasn't difficult to figure out that there was probably some connection between that incident and this conversation. 

"One of the parents had sent me an email, expressing concern about the way that some of the older students had been 'hanging out'," he made the little air quotes gesture around the words, "on the bus on the return trip from the amusement park. They felt that some of the behavior that they had witnessed was inappropriate, and that they knew that at least one of the students involved was an instructor, and so they were especially concerned about the influence that that might have on the younger students who might look up to said instructor, and was that really the kind of message that I wanted to send to my students?"

"She was talking about me," Lexa said, her voice flat. Her hands balled into fists, and she forced herself to relax her fingers. "She was talking about me and Clarke."

"That is my assumption," Master Gustus said. "She didn't name names, but she made her message quite clear without doing so."

"And the rest?" Lexa asked. "You said you got emails from half of the parents."

"In addition to the message that she'd sent to me, she'd also sent one to all of the other parents – I assume that she must have found a message that I'd sent out at some point to them and hit reply all. Serves me right for not using blind carbon copy, I guess. She sent all of them a message similar to the one that she'd sent me, asking them to please let me know their feelings about the matter."

"And they did," Lexa said. She felt her skin prickle, cold sweat sliding down her spine.

"They did," he agreed. He looked at her, leaning forward slightly. "Almost without exception, every message that I received from those parents was saying that they did not agree with her, and asking me not to take any action against you. Some mentioned that they had seen you on the bus, and they hadn't seen anything inappropriate happening. Many of them said that they thought you were a good influence on the kids, that they were consistently impressed by you when they see you during testing, and some of the parents – especially of the girls – said that their kids would be heartbroken if you left."

Lexa blinked, trying to take this in. It didn't make sense. Why would the girls be heartbroken? It wasn't as if she was the warmest person – she took training seriously, and tended to be fairly strict about letting kids goof off. She didn't have the patience that a lot of the other high ranking students who sometimes helped out did. But when she thought about it, she was the only girl among them, and maybe that, in and of itself, meant something to the younger female students. And maybe she wasn't always completely strict and stone-faced. She wasn't above joking around a little bit to get the kids to smile and loosen up when they seemed nervous working with her (because if nothing else, she was generally bigger than they were, and she remembered what it was like to feel like an older student was looming over you, judging your every move). 

Maybe she was overthinking this. Master Gustus wasn't the kind of person who would lie to her. Not about something like this. So maybe it was true, and she was just assuming the worst. Again. As usual. She took a breath and let it out slowly, and let the words settle. Let the light in.

But one thing still itched at the back of her mind. The way that he'd phrased it... "You said _almost_ without exception," she said after a moment. 

He nodded, but his expression didn't change significantly. It didn't drop into a frown or a scowl. "There were a couple from parents who weren't on the trip who wanted to know if there was any truth to what was being said; I assured them that there wasn't. There was also some the expressed a concern that that it was not my place to push any kind of agenda at the school, that it was the parents to provide guidance about these kinds of issues."

Lexa frowned, her eyes flicking back toward the front door and the sticker in the window, even though there was a wall in the way so she couldn't actually see it. 

Master Gustus didn't miss the glance. "I told them that it was not my intention to push any kind of agenda, but that it is important to me that this school is a place where everyone feels welcome, accepted, and safe."

"Hence the sticker," Lexa said. She looked at him, studying him like if she looked hard enough she could see through to what was going on in his head. "You know that some people are going to see that as crossing that line. As pushing an agenda."

"I know," he said. 

"You know that it might cost you students, if the parents don't like it."

"I know," he repeated. "And I will be sorry to lose those students, because it might be that those are the ones that most need to be here. But it's something that I'm willing to accept, because if I've learned one thing in my years of being a teacher, it's that you can't please everyone. There will always be someone who doesn't like the choices that you make. You can only do what you feel is best, and what you believe to be right. Which is what I'm doing now."

"I'm sorry that I—" she started, but Master Gustus held up a hand, stopping her.

"Don't be," he said. "Another thing that I've learned is that it's important to never stop learning. It's not good to let your ways of thinking stagnate. I've always thought of myself as a pretty accepting person, but this is the first time where I've really felt it necessary to take action, to take a stand on something like this. I know – or I hope – that you know that I accept you exactly as you are, and that it doesn't matter to me who you love, as long as you treat them well, and they treat you well. And I know that you accept yourself for who you are. With everything you've been through – and I don't know all the details, but I've figured out that it's a lot more than you've ever actually said out loud to me – your perseverance and your indomitable spirit impress me every single day. I would rather lose a few students whose parents think they can keep their children in a bubble than lose you because you felt, even for a second, that I didn't have your back. And there may be other students, now or in the future, who aren't as self-assured as you are, who are maybe struggling to accept who they are, or who they might be, and they might see that sticker and know that hey, at least they are safe here."

Again, Lexa let the words sink in, and the intention behind them, and she swallowed down the lump in her throat. "Thank you," she said. Not just for herself, but for any other student who might not be able to say the same, even though they wanted to.

"You're welcome," Master Gustus said. 

"If there's anything I can do, please let me know," she added. It seemed like the least she could do, considering that she'd been the one to cause this. 

"There is," he said, "or there might be. Do you know if the university runs any kind of official training? I looked it up and I see that there's an office of LGBTQ affairs, but I didn't see anything specific."

"They do," Lexa said. "It's usually just for people at the university, but I think they sometimes do trainings that are open to the public, if they have space. And if they aren't technically open... I can probably pull some strings." 

"I appreciate it," he said. "I want to make sure that if anyone does come to me to take me up on the promise that that sticker offers, that I'm as prepared as I can be. The online training was good, but actually doing something face-to-face with other people would be better."

"I'll reach out," Lexa said. "I don't know if I'll get a response right away, since it's summer, but I'll let you know."

"Thank you," he said. He glanced at the clock then. "If you go get changed, we might be able to get in a little bit of a workout before the kids arrive." 

"I can't decide if that's an offer or a threat," she joked. She stood up, and so did he, and before she knew what was happening he had wrapped her in a hug. She put her arms around him, hugging back for a second, before he let her go. 

He grinned at her as he nudged her toward the door. "I guess you'll just have to find out."


	145. Clarke

Clarke heard her phone buzzing against the table and unearthed it from under several sketches that she'd discarded, which had become scrap paper for testing colors on before she applied them to her actual canvas... or, well, watercolor paper, technically. She glanced at the screen and saw 'Mom', and swiped across the screen with a knuckle to answer, because her mother probably wouldn't call her if it wasn't important. "Hold on!" she said loudly, because the phone wasn't on speaker. She picked it up and pressed it between her shoulder and her ear. "Hey. Sorry. I had my hands full. Have my hands full."

"Oh," her mother said. "If it's not a good time—"

"No, Mom, it's okay," Clarke said. "I was just starting to clean up from painting and—"

"You're painting again? Oh, I'm so glad to hear that," Abby said. "It was always something you enjoyed, and it always seemed like it helped you deal with stress."

"It did," Clarke said. "It does. I'm glad to be doing it again too. I'm hoping that I'll still be able to find the time once school starts back up." Which wasn't something she particularly wanted to think about, even though it was fast approaching. Her research assistance position had officially ended, but the doctor that she'd been working for had said that if she was interested, she would probably have things for her to do in the future, on this project or another. Clarke had told her that she would definitely keep in touch, because if she was impressed enough with what she'd done over the summer to want to keep her on, it seemed pretty foolish to throw that opportunity away, even if she wasn't sure that she would have time for it... or for anything, really, beyond classes and homework and occasionally attempting to have a social life.

And a girlfriend, which was the part she was trying hardest not to think about. What was going to happen when classes started up again and she had to move back into the dorms? Not that she really had to spend a lot of time there if she didn't want to, but Octavia might be a bit put out if they were sharing a dorm room and she was never home. (But on the other hand there was the distinct possibility that Octavia might do the exact same thing to her with Lincoln.)

"Speaking of which," Abby said, "is there anything that you need for school? Notebooks, pens?"

"No one writes anything on paper anymore," Clarke teased. "What is this, the Stone Age?"

Her mom laughed. "I would think that teachers would make you," she said, "rather than having a whole bunch of students sitting there quote-unquote taking notes on their laptops when they're actually playing games or checking social media."

Clarke's smile faltered a little. She knew that her mother didn't mean anything by it, but she couldn't help feeling just a little insulted, because she knew that a lot of other people might say the same thing and really mean it. "Some of us do take our classes seriously," Clarke said, keeping her tone as neutral as she could manage. 

"I know," Abby said. "You've always been a very good student, and I don't expect that that has changed. So is there anything that you need? Or Lexa?"

Ever since the party at which Lexa had effectively cut her father out of her life, every time Clarke had talked to her mother, Abby had always made a point of checking to make sure that Lexa was all right. It seemed that she had decided that being an emergency mom wasn't enough anymore; she had to step it up and try to fill the void that had been left behind by Captain Woods. What Clarke didn't say was that Lexa's father hadn't been part of her life for a very long time, and that Lexa telling him that she didn't want him around anymore didn't significantly change anything in her daily life.

"I think we're both all set," Clarke said, "but I'll let you know."

"Please do," Abby said. "I feel like a bad mother, not even being there to help you move back into the dorms. The least I can do is make sure that you have everything you need, even if it's only by saying to go ahead and put it on the credit card."

"You're not a bad mother," Clarke said. "You're just a busy one." She was slightly surprised to realize that she really, genuinely meant it. She'd been at odds with her mother for a very long time, but over the past few months they'd managed to reconnect, or maybe to forge new connections between them without falling into the old patterns of behavior that had not been healthy for either of them. It wasn't _all_ Lexa's doing, but she'd given them the initial kick in the butt to get their acts together, and for that Clarke would always be grateful. It felt _good_ to have her mom back, even if it was a little bit long distance. Most of the time, she was glad to have the space. She could figure out what it meant to actually be independent, to have to make her own decisions and take care of her own day-to-day life, while still knowing that if she needed it, her mother would be there to support her or help her get back up again if she stumbled and fell.

"Sometimes," Abby said. "I'd forgotten how mindnumbingly boring having an infant can be."

Clarke blinked. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean that babies sleep a lot, and when they're sleeping, you have nothing to do. Which I should not complain about, because I know that for a lot of new mothers, that absolutely isn't the case. But Marcus has been so good about keeping up on chores and things that other than the occasional load of laundry, for the most part when Vera is sleeping, I am just looking for ways to keep myself entertained."

"If she's sleeping and you have nothing to do, shouldn't you be sleeping too?" Clarke asked. "Isn't that the main thing that people are always complaining about when they have a new baby, that they never get any sleep?"

"Vera's actually a pretty good sleeper," Abby said. "Even at night. She'll wake up to be fed once or twice, but other than that she generally doesn't keep us up to all hours. Unlike _some_ babies I could mention."

Clarke knew that the jibe was aimed at her; she'd been told on many occasions how much of a handful she was when she was a baby. She'd been too curious about everything around her, her parents had said, and she would fight sleep, getting crankier and crankier the longer she held out, because she didn't want to miss out on any of the action. It was a habit she hadn't entirely outgrown, although now that she was older she had learned to appreciate the value of a nap.

"Sorry," she said, even though she knew that her mother wasn't looking for an apology. "I guess it's probably better that you got the difficult one out of the way first, when you were still young enough to handle it." 

"Watch yourself, young lady," Abby said, but the warning tone didn't conceal the fact that she was smiling. Clarke could hear it in her voice.

"What are you going to do?" Clarke asked, "ground me? Because I feel like you might have kind of a hard time enforcing it from there."

This time her mother actually laughed. "You have a point. Anyway, sometimes I do nap when she's napping, but adults – even parents with infants – need less sleep than the infants themselves. In a few months she'll be much more interesting. But trust me, you find yourself starved for adult conversation after spending most of the day with someone whose primary method of communication is screaming."

"Oh, so _that's_ why you called," Clarke said. "You didn't actually want to talk to _me_ , you just needed someone who was capable of polysyllabic communication." 

"You got me," Abby said. "I just scrolled down my contact list and picked a number at random, and you were the lucky winner." 

Clarke grinned. "Lucky, lucky me." 

They chatted for a little while longer, about what everyone was up to and how they were doing, because her mother had more or less adopted all of her friends, and had to check in like the concerned mother that she was. They talked about school and the classes that Clarke was taking next semester, and it turned out that her mother actually knew one of her professors. She had worked with him in the past on a few cases. "He'd be a good person to have on your side when you're applying for med school," Abby said. "A letter of recommendation from him would look really good."

Clarke swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. "Yeah," she managed to say, and then licked her lips. "About that."

Silence on the other end that lasted just a second too long. "What about that?" Abby asked, and Clarke could hear the concern in her voice, bordering on alarm. 

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, bracing herself for a conversation that she'd been putting off, not sure that she would ever need to have it. It was still early enough in her undergrad career that she might change her mind again about where she wanted to go in the future, what she wanted to do, and maybe she should just keep her mouth shut and deal with it when she officially had to make a decision, save herself having to deal with her mother's disappointment now. But would it be worse if she waited, and her mother found out that she'd actually been thinking about this for years? 

"I've been doing a lot of thinking," Clarke said, "about the future, and what I want to do."

"All right..." her mother said, obviously waiting for her to say more.

"I've always said that I wanted to be a doctor," Clarke said. "I never liked math enough to want to be an engineer like Dad, and you were like... a superhero to me. You saved people's lives. When they were sick, you helped them get better. I wanted to do that, too." 

"Wanted?" Abby had picked up on the past tense.

"Want," Clarke corrected. "I still do. But at the same time... I keep thinking about how med school is getting more and more competitive, and you can get amazing grades and scores on tests and still not end up where you want to be."

"Clarke," Abby said, "you don't need to worry about that. You're amazing, and—"

"You're my mom," Clarke interrupted. "You're required to say that. And I don't want to have to use the fact that I'm your kid to leverage myself into med school, and I don't want to have to worry that the fact that you're my mother is the reason that I got in over someone else."

"What are you saying?" her mother asked. 

She was saying it all wrong. Why did this keep happening? Why had she led with her concerns about getting into med school rather than the fact that she already had another plan of what she wanted to do? 

"I've been thinking about it, and the more I think about it, the more I think that maybe that's not the route I want to take," Clarke said. "I still want to help people. I still love medicine, and I don't want to give it up entirely. But I'm also not sure that I want to be in school and internships and everything for the next ten years. I'm not sure that I wanted to wait that long for my life to begin."

Again, there was a long silence, and Clarke started to squirm. "Say something," she said finally. "Mom. Say something."

"What are you thinking about doing instead?" Abby finally asked. "Do you have a plan?"

"I do," Clarke said, relieved that her mother was still listening, and seemed to be willing to give her a chance. "I'm going to finish the pre-med program, so that if down the line I decide to go to med school after all, I'll have that option. But I've really been thinking that after undergrad, I'd like to go to grad school for physical therapy. It's still medical, it's still helping people heal and recover from illness and injury... but it's only three years of school, and it's something that I think that I might really enjoy, and that I would be good at. At one point Raven was having problems with her leg, with the muscles cramping and spasming, and I massaged it out for her, and she actually said then that if I decided that I didn't want to go through the whole med school thing that I should consider going into physical therapy, and I don't think she was joking."

She could hear her mother breathing on the other end, and she tried to read into what kind of breathing it was. Was she gearing up for a lecture? Was she sighing in disappointment? "Mom?"

"I think that you will be good at whatever you put your mind and heart to," Abby said finally. "I think that you are a strong, smart, determined young woman, and if you decide you want to do something, you'll do it."

"But?" Clarke asked, because it felt like there was a 'but'. 

"No 'but'," Abby said. "I would encourage you to take some classes that are geared toward that end of things, and to see about getting an internship of some kind in a physical therapy setting to make sure that it's going to be a good fit for you. Make sure that it's going to satisfy you, that you're going to get out of it what you want to get out of it."

Clarke nodded. "That's a good idea, and I'm sure that if I asked Raven, she can point me in the right direction." 

"Good," Abby said. "You still have time before you have to decide for sure. I just want you to make sure that you're going into whatever decision you end up making with your eyes wide open."

"I know," Clarke said. "Thank you." And then she asked what she had been avoiding asking, what she had been most worried about ever since she'd even started to consider the idea. "You're not... disappointed?"

"No," Abby said. "I always knew that you would follow your own path. Even if you did – do – become a doctor, you won't necessarily follow in my footsteps. All I want is for you to be happy, not just in whatever job you end up doing, although of course I absolutely do want you to be happy there, but in life in general. I'm not going to tell you it was easy, juggling med school and internships with marriage and motherhood, but it was what I wanted, and I was happy to make whatever sacrifices were necessary – usually sleep – to make it all work. I don't get to dictate what should make you happy. If for you the balance tips less to the side of your career and more toward family and free time... that's all right. You'll still do excellent work, and I have no doubt that you will do amazing things in the world."

Clarke brushed hastily at her eyes. "Thanks, Mom," she said. 

"Any time, babe." Clarke heard something in the background, and then her mother's sigh. "I've gotta go," she said. "Back to monosyllabic screaming. If there's anything you need, any of you, let me know, all right?"

"All right," Clarke said.

"I love you, Clarke."

"Love you too." She hung up and set the phone down, then propped her elbows on the counter and her head in her hands and let herself have a minute to let the tears go, because she was just so relieved that the conversation was over with, and that it had actually gone better than she'd hoped. It made her feel better that whatever choice she ended up making, she would do it with her mother's support. She hadn't realized how much that meant. 

She finished rinsing her brushes and putting them away, then texted Lexa to ask her out to dinner tonight. Maybe it was just a small victory, but it still felt like it was worth celebrating.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My laptop is acting up again. *sigh* Getting this posted before I start doing too many things to repair it, for fear that I make things worse.


	146. Lexa

Lexa had dragged herself out of bed for a run, leaving Clarke pouting sleepily behind. It had been tempting to just tell Anya to go by herself, but Master Gustus was away at some kind of conference or symposium or something for the next few days, so this was the only exercise she was going to get, and if they didn't go early, they would suffer for it later as the heat and humidity crept up. 

She and Anya matched each other's pace easily now; it didn't even require any effort. Occasionally one or the other of them would have to fall back so that they were single file to let someone pass, but most of the time they were side by side. 

They took their favorite route that led them through a nearby park, where there were lots of trees and therefore lots of shade. The patterns the dappled light formed on the pavement could be mesmerizing, and it came as a jolt when Anya spoke after probably half an hour of silence. 

"I talked to Indra yesterday," she said. 

Lexa frowned. "Indra?" The name seemed vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place it.

"The person whose house we're living in," Anya said. 

"Oh," Lexa said, and her stomach instantly knotted. She didn't actually stumble, but she fell out of step with Anya, and had to struggle to get her limbs coordinated into the proper rhythm. "About what?" 

Anya glanced over at her, and Lexa saw her expression shift. "Don't worry," she said. "We're not getting kicked out."

That was _exactly_ what she had been worried about, and Lexa wasn't sure if she had actually become that easy to read, or if it was just that Anya knew her that well. She didn't try to pretend that she had been thinking anything else. "That's good."

"But she is coming for a visit," Anya said. "Kind of unexpectedly, but she needs to attend to some things here before the summer is over."

"When is she coming?" Lexa asked.

"Today." Anya had the good grace to at least look apologetic. "I would have told you last night, but you were..." She smirked.

"Yeah, yeah," Lexa said, and pretended that her cheeks were just flushed from exertion. "So... how is that going to work?"

"She offered to get a hotel," Anya said. "I told her that was stupid, there was no way that I was going to make her pay to stay somewhere when she has a house to live in – her _own_ house. I said that I would sleep on the couch. She tried to argue, but—"

"You're not sleeping on the couch," Lexa said. "That's just as stupid as her staying at a hotel."

Anya raised an eyebrow. "Do you have a better plan?"

"You take my room," Lexa said. "I stay with Clarke. She hasn't moved back to the dorms yet; they don't open until next week for returning students."

"Are you sure?" Anya asked. "I have it on good authority that the couch is actually pretty comfortable."

"I'm sure," Lexa said. She wouldn't have been sure if it had been a stranger sleeping in her room, in her bed, but Anya... Anya was all right. And if she was staying at Clarke's it gave her an excuse to not have to spend time with strangers. Or stranger. Although she should probably at least meet her briefly, say thank you face to face for letting her stay there. She owed her that much.

"When is she coming?"

"I have to pick her up at the airport at eight," Anya said. "When we get back I'm just going to shower and go."

Lexa nodded, and they finished their run in silence. True to her word, Anya headed straight for the shower when they got back. Lexa did the same, and by the time she was done, Anya was already heading for the door again. "I'll see you in a little bit," she said. "Assuming her flight's on time."

"Okay," Lexa said, not actually committing to be there when she got back. She went into her room and found that Clarke had woken up and was sitting propped up with pillows, sketching. She sat down next to her and leaned in for a kiss, then glanced at the sketchbook. She felt her cheeks flush for the second time that day, and Clarke didn't quite meet her eye as she flipped the cover back over the page. 

"It's a figure study," she said, a little bit defensively, but Lexa could see that she was also fighting back a smile. "It's _art_."

"I never said it wasn't," Lexa said. "Is it okay if I stay with you for the next few days?"

Clarke's smile immediately disappeared. "Is everything okay?"

"It's fine," Lexa said. "Anya's friend Indra is coming to visit, and rather than anyone sleeping on the couch, I figure she can have Anya's room and Anya can have mine, and I'll stay with you."

"That's fine," Clarke said. "There's not a lot left in the place, but we'll make do." She leaned her cheek against Lexa's shoulder. "I'm going to miss that place."

"Why?" Lexa asked. The furniture hadn't been the most comfortable, and she had always assumed it would feel awkward living in a space that belonged to other people, that you were just living in temporarily. Granted _she_ lived in a place that belonged to another person, too, but there wasn't much in the place to indicate what kind of person Indra was, so she'd kind of always just thought of it as Anya's place... and now more often than not, _their_ place."

"Because... I guess it kind of felt – sometimes – like it was _ours_ ," Clarke said. 

"Ah," Lexa said, and she could see where Clarke was coming from. On the nights they'd been there and Octavia had been out, she had sometimes thought about what it would be like to actually live with Clarke, to have their own place together. But if she thought too much about it, she started to get a little panicky, because as much as she loved Clarke, and as many times as she imagined them having a future together that stretched for not just years but decades, in the here and now she had a hard time imagining living somewhere that Anya wasn't. Yes, she'd done it in Australia, but that had been different. She hadn't had a choice. Now she did, and she wasn't sure she was ready to truly be on her own... even if she was with Clarke.

"I don't want to go back to the dorms," Clarke said. "Everything is going to change."

"Not everything," Lexa said. "I'll still love you." 

"Besides that," Clarke said, and then took her hand and squeezed it. "Sorry. That sounded way too dismissive. I'll still love you too, but it's going to be harder to actually find time to be together."

"We did it last year," Lexa pointed out. "We'll do it again."

"You sound so sure."

"I refuse to even entertain the thought that we won't," Lexa said. "And I'm very determined."

Clarke finally smiled at that. "I'd kind of noticed that about you." She pulled Lexa into a kiss, and Lexa let herself be distracted. 

They had gotten up and were making breakfast when Anya got home, a short-ish woman with dark skin and short hair following her, looking around like the place was new to her, and not her own home. Maybe Anya had rearranged things when she'd moved in, Lexa thought, and they _had_ added Clarke's father's chair to the mix. (It didn't go with the rest of the décor very well, if she was being honest. They'd talked about getting a slipcover for it so that it blended in a little better, but they'd never gotten around to it.)

"What are you making?" Anya asked, hanging her keys up on the hook next to the door. 

"Pancakes," Lexa said. 

"Mix or from scratch?"

"From scratch," Lexa said, shooting her a look that pretended to be offended. "I'm using _your_ recipe, so they'll probably even be edible." She forced a smile, trying to act like this wasn't awkward. 

"There they are," Clarke said triumphantly, removing her head from the freezer with a half-used bag of frozen blueberries held triumphantly in one hand. "Oh, hey." She looked at Indra and smiled. "We haven't met," she said. She leaned over the counter, extending a hand, and Indra took the few steps across the room to take it. "I'm Clarke. I don't live here." 

"Could have fooled me," Anya grumbled, but Lexa knew she didn't mean it. If she actually had a problem with Clarke's presence, she would have made a point of encouraging Lexa to go spend more time at her place. But she hadn't, and Lexa suspected that just as she got nervous thinking about moving out, maybe Anya still preferred to have her nearby, just in case things got dark for her again. 

"Indra," the woman said. "And you must be Lexa. Who does live here."

"Yes, m—" Lexa said, cutting herself off because she could actually call this woman 'ma'am'. Not that she didn't owe her that level of respect, but sometimes it made things awkward. She finished pouring a scoop of batter onto the griddle and set down the ladle, aware of Clarke immediately moving to sprinkle some of the blueberries onto the uncooked pancake as she extended her hand to shake Indra's. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"You as well," Indra said.

Now that she was getting a better look at her, Lexa realized that she looked familiar somehow, but she couldn't quite place the face. She tried not to frown as she wracked her brain. "I appreciate you letting me stay here," she said. 

"Of course," Indra replied. "When Anya asked me if she could have a friend move in, and offered to fix up the spare room as a guest room in order to so do, I couldn't see any reason to object. She's doing me just as much of a favor staying here as I am doing her giving her a place to stay. It works to both of our benefit, and now yours."

Lexa nodded, not sure what else to say, and she was grateful for the distraction of needing to flip the pancakes before the burned. 

When they all sat down to eat, Clarke asked, "So how do you know each other?" Her eyes went from Anya to Indra and back again, and it was a fair question, given the fact that age-wise, they weren't exactly peers. Lexa knew that Indra taught English in whatever country she was living in, but she'd heard about programs like that, and it didn't actually require any kind of teaching degree – they basically considered the ability to speak English fluently the only real prerequisite to teaching it. But that didn't mean that she wasn't actually a teacher, either. Maybe she was a professor that Anya had had. She'd never asked. 

"We met at the dojang," Anya said. "Indra's been training there for..."

"Ten years," Indra said. "Or it would be if I was still here to train. I've been there since the day that he opened the doors."

That's when it clicked. Lexa had seen her in some of the old pictures that hung on the walls of Master Gustus' office. 

"Did you teach there?" Clarke asked. 

"I only taught classes on my own when Master Gustus actually took a vacation, which was practically never. I did help out, though," Indra said. "What they don't tell you when you start training is that another word for senior student is practice dummy." She grinned.

Anya laughed. "Ain't that the truth?" She reached over and nudged Lexa's elbow gently. "Although now he tends to let Lexa and I do most of the demonstrating together, and keeps himself out of it."

"He does enjoy watching people get thrown around," Indra joked... or at least Lexa assumed she was joking. "How is he?"

"He's good," Anya said. "He's away for the weekend, so there's no classes. There's no one really qualified to teach them in his absence with you gone."

"What about you?" Indra asked. "You could teach them."

Anya made a face. "I have the _knowledge_ with which to teach them, yes," she said. "But I do not have the patience for teaching them. The adult class, maybe, but not the juniors or the little kids."

"Fair enough," she said. "It's too bad that he's not around this weekend. I would have liked to see him. Congratulate him on almost a decade of keeping that place running." 

Lexa frowned. Indra had said it before, but it hadn't actually registered at the time. "Wait, the school's been open for ten years this year?"

"September," Indra said. "Does he have anything planned for it?" She looked at Anya when she asked.

"Not that I know of," Anya said. "Lexa would know better than I would."

"I don't think so," Lexa said. "You know how he is, though. He's not big on making a fuss or being the center of attention." 

"But ten years is worth celebrating," Clarke said. "Don't you think?"

"It doesn't really matter what I think," Lexa said. "He's the boss." But already an idea was forming... an idea that she didn't have a lot of time to pull off, and she wished she'd known about this sooner, because now that she'd had the idea, she knew that she needed to do it. Master Gustus had helped her get back on her feet, maybe not as much as Anya or Clarke, but he'd helped. He'd trusted her with looking out for Aden, and she was pretty sure that he had done it as much for her benefit as Aden's. And it had worked out pretty well for both of them.

"Since when has that ever mattered to you?" Anya asked.

"It hasn't," Lexa said, "and it's not going to start to now, either. But I'm going to need help."

Anya grinned, and Indra smiled. "I'm not here for long," Indra said, "but if there's anything that I can do, please let me know."

"I'm not sure yet," Lexa said, "but if you're still in contact with people who used to train at the school but who maybe have stopped for whatever reason, if you could reach out that would be great."

"What are you thinking?" Anya asked.

"I'm thinking that we should get as many students – past and present – together as possible. Throw a little party. Or maybe a not so little party, depending on how many people we can get."

"Where?" Anya asked. "We have a hard enough time fitting more than a dozen people in the dojang for class."

"I'll have to figure that out," Lexa said. "It would be great to actually have it at his farm – plenty of space there – but I suspect it might be difficult to plan a surprise on his own property."

Indra grinned. "Actually... that might not be as hard as you think. Leave that part to me."


	147. Clarke

Clarke tried to balance the box she was carrying on her hip while she pulled out her student ID, which now apparently also served as her key into her dorm room. Great in theory, maybe, but in practice it was just another thing to have to juggle when she was also carrying her car keys. She slid it into the lock... and of course nothing happened. She tried it again, and still nothing. 

"Let me try," Octavia said. "Maybe they didn't program yours right." 

"That would be my luck," Clarke grumbled, and it wasn't comforting at all when Octavia's worked on the first try, the little light on the lock blinking from red to green. 

Octavia grinned and pushed the door open, stepping inside and setting down a crate of, as far as Clarke could tell, random stuff to block it from shutting again. Clarke shuffled in after her and looked around. "Well," she said, "at least it's bigger than last year?"

"And we have a semi-private bathroom," Octavia said. "Don't forget that."

Clarke had actually forgotten, but now she remembered. They'd picked this specific room for that reason; they only had to share their bathroom with one other room, and not the entire floor. "Hopefully whoever we share it with aren't slobs."

"Or boys," Octavia said. "If it's boys, I am _not_ going to be the one to clean the pee off the toilet... and floors... and walls... when they miss."

"Seriously?" Clarke asked, grimacing.

"Seriously," Octavia said. "Whoever decided that teaching boys to pee standing up was a good idea really ought to be forced to clean every bathroom a boy has ever been in, ever." 

"It's probably not boys," Clarke said as she poked her head into the bathroom and saw an array of body washes, lotions, and makeup already on the little shelf that was attached to the wall. 

"You never know," Octavia said. 

"You don't," Clarke said. "But just in general, I suspect that the school wouldn't set things up so that there is a co-ed bathroom. Not that they don't know what goes on in a building full of hormone-charged college students, but at least they have some plausible deniability." She steered away from the less savory possibilities of what could happen if there was a direct link between two dorm rooms shared by people of opposite genders. Obviously they could – and probably should and would – lock the door from the outside when they weren't using it to prevent people from the other room just wandering into theirs, but... She shuddered, thinking about what might have happened last year if she'd been in a room like this and Finn had figured out who her neighbors were and convinced them to let him in to surprise her or something.

"You okay?" Octavia asked. "You look like you just saw a ghost."

"Kind of," Clarke said. "Just... thinking about last year." She looked at her friend. "About Finn."

"Oh," Octavia said. "That asshole is long gone."

"Is he, though?" Clarke asked. She'd never actually taken the time to find out what had happened with him. The last she knew he was still awaiting trial. And if the trial had to be held in the same jurisdiction (or whatever it would be called, she wasn't sure and Lexa wasn't here to ask) that the crime had been committed, that meant that when that happened he would be in the area. Obviously it would be a really bad idea for him to come anywhere near her... but would that really stop him? When you had nothing to lose, you had nothing to lose, right?

"Yes," Octavia said. "Didn't you know? He took a plea deal of some kind, and he's got psychiatric treatment and community service and stuff... but it's not around here. I guess he went home, or he was forced to go home, or something. I don't know all of the details. I'm surprised Raven didn't tell you."

So was Clarke... but then again, maybe she wasn't. Maybe Raven didn't want to drag all of that back up again when Clarke was finally moving past it. She was sure that if she'd asked, Raven would have told her, but maybe she'd decided that it was better to just let things be if Clarke didn't bring it up. She didn't know, and she probably never would, because she didn't think she would ask.

It didn't mean that he would never turn up in her life again, but there was a good chance that if he did, it wouldn't be any time soon, and he would be in a better place mentally then... assuming whatever treatment he was being given actually worked. She kind of hoped that she would never have to find out.

"Which bed do you want?" Octavia asked. 

"You can take the one by the window again if you want," Clarke said. "I'd rather not wake up to the sun in my face."

"Cool," Octavia said, and began to unpack. It took a couple more trips down to Clarke's car to get everything, because they hadn't bothered to recruit help this time around. By the time they were done getting everything unpacked and arranged, it was already late afternoon. 

"Do we have any kind of floor meeting?" Clarke asked. 

"No," Octavia said. "Not until tomorrow, since not everyone will be moved in until then." They'd chosen to move in on the first day they were able because the people they'd been subletting the apartment from had actually come back a few days ago, and Octavia had been staying with Lincoln and Clarke with Lexa while they waited for the dorms to open back up for returning students. Although Clarke knew that Lexa didn't mind having her there (it wasn't really much different from the rest of the summer) and Anya didn't seem to be bothered by her being there, she was pretty sure that they were both getting a little sick of navigating around all of her _stuff_ , which was distributed between Lexa's room and the living room so that it didn't completely overtake any particular area. 

"Okay," Clarke said. "I guess there's some kind of special welcome back thing at the dining hall..." She didn't even bother to try to sound enthusiastic. The idea of going back to eating dining hall food after a summer of Anya's cooking and takeout, with her and Octavia's own occasional attempts at food that didn't come from a microwave mixed in for variety, was about as big a letdown as Clarke could imagine.

"Can't," Octavia said, glancing at her phone. "Lincoln just got out of work. I'm going to meet him." 

"Oh. I'll see you tonight?"

Octavia looked at her as if she was speaking another language. "Seriously? You were actually planning to spend the night here?" When Clarke didn't immediately answer, she rolled her eyes. "I don't plan to actually sleep here until I absolutely have to," she said. "Which would be tomorrow night at the earliest."

"Right," Clarke said. "I'll see you tomorrow, then. Since we have that meeting."

Octavia groaned. "Right. I won't forget." But she sounded like she wanted to. "Call Lexa," she said as she pulled open the door. "You don't want to be here anymore than I do."

Clarke looked around the room and thought about maybe hanging up some more sketches and paintings, or organizing her desk or something, but she knew that Octavia was right. She _didn't_ want to be here. Especially not by herself, with all of the thoughts that their earlier conversation had stirred up. 

She pulled her phone from her pocket and pushed the button to light up the screen. Before she could even finish tapping in her passcode, the phone started ringing, and Lexa's name popped up. She swiped across to answer the call. "I was just about to call you," she said. 

"I saved you the trouble," Lexa replied, and Clarke could hear the smile in her voice. "How was it?"

"Moving in? Not bad. We've got things mostly set up." Clarke looked around again. "You could come see it, if you wanted to."

"Do you want me to?" Lexa asked. 

Clarke shrugged... a bad habit that she was still working on breaking, but other than her mother, she didn't actually talk to people on the phone all that often. Most of her communication was done via text. She wasn't even sure why Lexa had decided to call instead of just sending her a message, but she didn't mind, because it was nice to hear her voice. 

"It's weird," she said, then realized that she had actually spoken out loud. She hadn't meant to. 

"What's weird?"

"Just... I know that you're only a few minutes away, but me being here and you being there... it feels like so much farther. Further?"

"Both, maybe," Lexa said. "Farther is distance, further is degree or extent." She was quiet for a second before adding, "I understand what you're saying, though. It feels different. Even different from this summer, when objectively we were actually living farther apart."

"Maybe it's just knowing that you can't just come by any time you want," Clarke said. 

"Maybe." Clarke could hear Lexa moving around – pacing or rustling through papers or something. "What are you up to tonight?"

"Nothing," Clarke said. "Octavia already left to go spend the night with Lincoln. She said she wasn't going to sleep here until she absolutely had to."

"I guess that could be nice," Lexa said. "Almost like having your own room."

"I don't want my own room," Clarke said, too quickly and maybe a little too loud. "I don't..." She frowned, debating whether to just tell Lexa what was going on in her head. Not doing so wasn't lying, exactly. They didn't tell each other their every thought, after all. But given how she was feeling, it felt like a pretty big thing to withhold. On the other hand, she didn't really _want_ to talk about it. She didn't want to think about it, because it brought back that walls closing in feeling she'd had on the night she'd first called Lexa.

"Let's go out," she said. "To dinner, and then... wherever. A movie. Miniature golf. Anything."

"Miniature golf?" Lexa asked, and Clarke could hear she was trying not to laugh.

"Yes! I am amazing at miniature golf!"

"Is that right?" Now she was smirking. Clarke could tell. 

"You don't believe me?"

"I believe that you believe it."

"Oh, now it's _definitely_ on," Clarke said. "Where do you want to eat?"

"I'm sure there's some kind of snack stand at the mini golf place," Lexa said. "Unless you wanted to go somewhere where there's actual tables and chairs and no insects."

"Actually, a hot dog and French fries sounds pretty good right now," Clarke said. "Meet you there, or...?"

"No point in us taking two cars," Lexa said. "Just come here."

"Okay. Be there in ten." Clarke hung up and made sure that she wasn't covered in dust or anything else from unpacking, and after a minute's consideration, decided to change her shirt into something a little more date-like... and by date-like, she meant low cut, so that maybe Lexa would get distracted and her game would be thrown off. She brushed her hair and pulled it back from her face, and then grabbed her keys and wallet and headed downstairs to her car.

Lexa met her at the door, and whether she'd done it intentionally or not, Clarke knew that she wasn't the only one whose outfit would be distraction. Her jeans were skin tight, her shirt slightly translucent, and cut low on the sides so that Clarke could see her bra peeking out. There was nothing indecent about it... but it would take more effort to keep her eye on the ball and not on her girlfriend than she might have liked.

They drove to the mini golf course, which also had an arcade, go karts, and batting cages, and paid the fee to get in. They decided to get food first, and were lucky to find a place at the end of one of the picnic tables to sit with their hot dogs and mixed basket of fries and onion rings. "After I kick your ass at golf," Clarke said, "we could do the go karts if you want."

"What was that about you kissing my ass?" Lexa asked, raising an eyebrow. "Because I don't think this is the time or the place." 

Clarke almost choked on her soda. "This is a family establishment!" she said.

Lexa just smiled sweetly and dragged a fry through the ketchup before popping it in her mouth. "You started it," she said. "With the language."

"It wasn't the—" Clarke stopped, knowing that it wasn't likely that she was going to win this, or any other, verbal sparring match. Not against a future lawyer. "Just for that, I'm eating the last onion ring." She picked it up and bit into it savagely, but then Lexa pouted at her, and she ended up giving half to her anyway. 

"Ready?" Clarke asked as they went to get their clubs and balls. She picked a blue one from the bucket, and Lexa took a red. 

"I was born ready," Lexa said, straightening herself to take advantage of the couple of inches that she had on Clarke.

Clarke looked her up and down, appreciating the view, and said, "Really? Because babies can't actually focus on anything that's more than a foot or so away from their faces when they're first born, so I suspect your golf game was probably a little lacking during infancy."

Lexa laughed. "Is that how it is?" she asked.

"That's how it is," Clarke replied. She glanced around, then reached out to pull Lexa to her and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek before letting her go and stepping up to the first hole.

As it turned out, they were actually both pretty terrible at miniature golf, although Clarke was inclined to place some of the blame on the seemingly impossible course. After a while, they stopped keeping track of the actual number of strokes it took to get the ball in the hole, instead making up their own scoring system. By the time they got to the eighteenth hole, they'd lost track completely, and declared it a tie that had to be broken immediately with a race around the go kart track... which became best out of three. When Lexa lost, she pulled Clarke into the arcade, insisting that she was the queen of Skeeball. Which apparently she was, because Clarke walked out of the arcade with a little blue stuffed gorilla Lexa had gotten for her with the tickets she'd won.

"Ice cream?" she asked.

"Not here," Lexa said. "They only have soft serve."

Clarke laughed. "Snob."

"It's _boring_!" Lexa objected. "You only have three choices – vanilla, chocolate, or swirl!"

"You can get sprinkles," Clarke said. "Chocolate or rainbow."

Lexa wrinkled her nose. "They're just little sugary plastic pellets," she said. 

"Fine," Clarke said. "But I'm getting a sundae!"

"Whatever you want," Lexa said. "My treat."


	148. Lexa

Even though she wouldn't be around for the actual event, Indra had been as good as her word about helping them set things up for the surprise tenth anniversary celebration for Master Gustus and the dojang. She's talked to Master Gustus' wife about letting them use the farm for the gathering, and she had not only agreed to let them use the property to hold the party, but had also agreed to keep it a secret from him. Indra had also reached out to old students that she remembered from back when the school had first started, getting the word out and encouraging them to do the same.

Lexa had reached out to the current students (or their parents, because she didn't trust the kids themselves to manage to keep things quiet) and those who had been students recently enough that their contact information was still in the school records... which she didn't exactly have permission to access, but she _had_ asked to use his laptop and gotten permission, and if he hadn't asked her _why_ , whose fault was that, really? 

The response that she got was immediate and enthusiastic, and it didn't take long for a lot of the control of the planning to be taken out of her hands. At first it bothered her, because she wanted to make sure that everything went smoothly and she didn't trust that that would happen if she wasn't the one in charge, but then classes started and she was glad that she didn't have to juggle all of the details of the party on top of classes and homework. 

One of the first responses she got was from a student who had recently graduated and gone off to college elsewhere, but who had trained at the school from the time she was young, and had continued to train in her college's Tae Kwon Do club. She'd sent Lexa an email with a video attached, and the message consisted of only four words: 'What do you think?'

It was a form – not one of the ones that they were taught in class, but an extended form, almost a dance but not quite, set to music. Obviously a demonstration piece, but it immediately got Lexa thinking. She emailed back a few minutes later, her reply nearly as short, 'Do you think we have enough time?'

She had been assured that they did, that in fact the girl – her name was Ontari, and she had left the school the same year that Lexa started – had been working on something with her college group that was nearly finished, and that she would be happy to let them use it as well. 

This led to a flurry of emails back and forth, often with videos attached, and Lexa asked about making some changes, because they would be working with a group of students of all ages and skill levels, and maybe they could incorporate some weapons stuff as well? 

"This would be so much easier if we were actually in the same place," Ontari said through Skype one evening. 

"It would," Lexa agreed, "but we're not. You're coming for the party, though?"

"Do you think I would put this much work into something and then not be there to be part of it?" Ontari asked. "No way."

Lexa nodded. "It's been hard coordinating times to actually practice with the kids, especially since it can't actually be done at the dojang, but I think it will be all right. Or all right enough that if they mess up it'll just be 'aw, that's so cute' rather than a complete disaster."

"What about people who aren't currently at the school, other than me?" Ontari asked.

"I've sent videos," Lexa said. "They say they've been practicing. I guess we'll find out." 

Ontari nodded. "He's going to love it no matter what," she said. "Because he's a softy like that. I bet you ten bucks he cries."

"No way," Lexa said. "He would never let the kids see him cry."

"You're willing to put money on that?"

"Sure," Lexa said. She was confident that she was right, and even if she wasn't, ten dollars wasn't going to make or break her. (Thankfully. Despite everything she'd said, her father was as good as his word and hadn't cut her off financially, so she still had some money coming in other than the little bit that Master Gustus paid her. She was pretty careful with it, though, in case her father ever changed his mind.)

"I guess I'll see you Friday?"

"Friday," Lexa agreed, and closed down her laptop. She looked over at Anya, who was packing her lunch for the next day. "This isn't crazy, right?" she asked. "We're not insane for attempting this?"

"Oh no," Anya said, "we have obviously lost our damn minds. But it's going to be worth it." She grinned. "If you want food for tomorrow, come get it. I'm not packing your lunch for you."

"I have a long enough break in the middle of the day that I can come home," Lexa said.

"But will you?"

Lexa shrugged. "Unless I get a better offer."

"Unless Clarke isn't busy, you mean," Anya said. 

"Maybe," Lexa said, but they both knew that that maybe was actually a yes.

The rest of the week flew by, and suddenly it was Friday. The party was the next day, but they had rented out the gym at a local community center for a few hours in the evening to get everyone that would be participating in the demonstration form together to practice it a few times. Because they hadn't wanted Master Gustus to get suspicious they hadn't been able to skip class to go at the beginning, and Lexa was nervous about what she would find when she got there.

Luckily, Ontari actually seemed to have things pretty well under control. Except for the newest students, she'd actually worked with a lot of them before, and they seemed to be just as willing to take direction from her as they would have from Lexa or Lincoln or Anya. Lexa held back, watching for a few minutes, and was surprised – and pleased – by what she saw. Although it wasn't perfect, the kids were actually focused and excited and most importantly, getting it right. 

"Oh good," Ontari said, when they reached the end and she saw that they had arrived. "Now we can really get things put together."

In the hour they had left, they managed to get everyone coordinated so they all knew where they were supposed to be and what they were supposed to be doing, and although Lexa couldn't actually watch because she was in the middle of it, when she watched the video that one of the parents had taken of their last run-through, she was pleased with the result. 

"This is going to be awesome," Ontari said. She'd been watching over Lexa's shoulder. 

"Thank you for the idea," Lexa said. "It never would have occurred to me, and even if it had, there's no way that I could have put something together in the amount of time that we had."

Ontari shrugged. "You helped make it better," she said. "So I think we can safely consider it a collaboration."

"Everyone go get some rest," Lexa said to everyone that was still left (some of the parents had hustled their kids out pretty fast; it was probably past a few bedtimes). "I'll see you all tomorrow."

She didn't leave until everyone else had, saying good night to the (somewhat impatient-looking) staff member of the community center as she passed. Clarke was waiting for her when she got home, and after a quick shower, she collapsed into bed beside her, pillowing her head on Clarke's shoulder and draping an arm over her stomach. She sighed as Clarke's fingers worked into her damp hair, massaging her scalp. 

"How did it go?" Clarke asked.

"Actually really well," Lexa said. "I think it's going to be really good tomorrow."

"Good," Clarke said, turning to kiss her forehead. "I'm going up early to help make sure that everything is organized, since you won't be able to."

"Thank you," Lexa said, tipping her face up so that she could kiss Clarke properly. "I appreciate that you're willing to do this, even though it's not even your school, or your responsibility."

"It's something that matters to you," Clarke said. "Therefore it matters to me." She tipped Lexa's chin up so that they were actually eye to eye. "I know you would do the same for me if the roles were reversed. Anyway, who doesn't like a party?"

Lexa smiled. "Thank you just the same."

She didn't sleep as well as she might have liked, but she certainly slept better than she would have if Clarke hadn't been there. (A fact that they were both learning the hard way, and it was going to be a very long semester, and a very long year, if they didn't get used to being apart at night soon.) In the morning she got up and got ready for class like she always did, and after the adult class was over, her job was to stall Master Gustus to give everyone enough time to get out to the farm before they arrived. A lot of the adults had opted to skip morning class, so luckily it was mostly just Anya, Octavia, Lincoln and Aden who needed the head start (and Aden was riding with Anya, although he said that his mom was planning to be at the party). 

When she decided that she'd probably given them enough time, she said goodbye, wishing him a good weekend and saying that she would see him next week. Then she got in her car and peeled out of the parking lot, speeding the entire way in the hope that she would beat him there, even if it was likely to only be by a minute or two.

When she arrived, the lawn in front of the farm was as filled with cars as it had been at the Fourth of July picnic, and obviously he would know something was up as soon as he turned into the driveway. But that was the only visible indication that something was going on. She parked and jogged to the back, where Anya tossed her a shirt to change into. She did so in the middle of the lawn, figuring her sports bra kept her covered enough to be decent, and she didn't think she had time to do anything else. They'd first considered color-coding the 10th Anniversary t-shirts they'd had made by rank, but they realized that that would result in a lot of black shirts, so instead they'd decided to give people a color based on what year they'd started training. It had probably cost them more than it would have to just get everyone the same color, but when Lexa looked at everyone – students in their t-shirts and white pants, even if they didn't train anymore – and everyone else in another color that they'd gotten for non-students who still wanted a shirt to mark the occasion. 

Ontari came over to her, pale cheeks flushed. "Everyone's ready," she said. "I think we should do it pretty early on before the kids completely scatter and lose focus." 

"I agree," Lexa said. "You've got the music ready and a place big enough cleared?"

"Yup."

"Thank you."

Then Master Gustus' wife came around the corner, waving her arms. "He's here!" she called. "He just pulled up." They all clustered together, forming a giant group with the kids in the front where they were visible and the adults in the back, and when Master Gustus came around the corner, looking confused and maybe slightly worried, they all shouted, "SURPRISE!"

Lexa watched his eyes flick up the banner with the school's name and 'Ten Years of Kicking...' on it (Octavia had come up with the idea, and they'd decided that it was too funny not to do), and then to everyone gathered, watched him take in faces that he probably hadn't seen in years... and then watched as his eyes filled with tears that he hastily wiped away. 

Ontari obviously noticed, too, because Lexa felt an elbow dig into her ribs. "You owe me ten bucks," she muttered, grinning.

Lexa just rolled her eyes, but she couldn't argue. Ontari had called it. 

"Okay, everyone," she said quietly. "Find your place on the... mat." Which wasn't a mat but a field, but Ontari had had the foresight to mark out its boundaries, along with a few spots that could serve as reference points, and the kids quickly found their places, with the adults arranging themselves around them. Ontari went over to a laptop and pressed on a key to start the music, and then hurried to her own spot.

The song started slow, and Lexa was pretty sure that Master Gustus hadn't quite figured out what they were doing, what was happening, because their movements weren't exactly the usual strikes and blocks that one would expect of a form. But then they hit the chorus, and a group of twenty or more of them, kids up to adults as old or older than Master Gustus himself, exploded into motion, punctuating the words that had been the reason Ontari had chosen the song in the first place, with a jump front kick that had them all completely off the ground.

_This is my **fight song**._  
_Take back my life song._  
_Prove I'm all right song._  
_My power's turned up,_  
_Starting right now I'll be strong._  
_I'll play my fight song,_  
_And I don't really care if nobody else believes,_  
_'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me._

By the time they finished, Master Gustus wasn't the only one wiping his eyes, and those of them who had just performed a form several times longer than their usual ones were breathless... and elated. Ontari threw her arms around Lexa, and Lexa hugged her back, not even caring that the other girl had accidentally hit her with the end of the short stick she held in the process. 

Master Gustus came over to them and wrapped them both in a hug, and then started dragging in everyone else that was in reach. When he finally let them go, he looked down at them – Lexa and Anya and Ontari and Lincoln and Octavia and Aden and a few others – and just shook his head. "You did all this?"

"Not alone," Lexa said. "We had a lot of help. Indra wanted me to tell you that—"

"That there's very few people that she would make a flight that long for the second time in a month for," Indra said, coming up behind him. Master Gustus spun around, and then Indra was off her feet as he picked her up in a bear hug. And then he was swarmed by other students, both current and former, and any further discussion would have to wait.

Indra came over to Lexa and held out her hand, and Lexa took it and shook it. "You did good," she said. 

"We couldn't have done it without you," Lexa said.

"You could have," Indra said. "But I'm happy that I was able to help."

Lexa nodded. She wasn't sure whether it was true or not, but she wasn't going to argue. All that mattered was that they'd pulled it off. Master Gustus had been surprised, and everyone seemed to be having a great time. 

Clarke came up beside her and tucked herself under Lexa's arm. "That was amazing," she said. "You're amazing."

"I hope someone got it on video," Lexa said. "I'd like to see it."

"I'm pretty sure there are probably at least a dozen videos," Clarke said, "but at least one person had an actual video camera, so you should be good." She squeezed Lexa's waist. "Did you see the cake?"

"Not yet," Lexa said. She'd known someone was bringing one, but she hadn't had the chance to see it, or anything else. People had promised pictures and all kinds of things, and she was excited to see what they'd come through with.

Clarke led her over to the table where the cake was in a box to keep away any bugs. She lifted the lid and Lexa looked inside. It was a huge sheet cake, and someone had gotten a collage of pictures from over the years, from the very first white belt class of ten years ago through one from their last testing cycle, with the school's logo in the middle, printed on that edible photo paper. 

"You realize that all of the kids are going to want to eat the piece that has their face on it," Lexa said. 

Clarke laughed. "Does that count as cannibalism?"

Lexa snorted. "I don't think it would stop them even if it did."

"Probably not," Clarke agreed. "Come on. Let's get some food before they attack it like a pack of hungry velociraptors."

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a little weird?" Lexa asked.

"It's one of my more endearing qualities," Clarke replied.

Lexa couldn't really argue with that. She draped her arm around Clarke's shoulder and went to join the line at the giant pot luck table the parents had organized. She looked around and couldn't help smiling. Indra was right. They'd done good.


	149. Clarke

Clarke woke up slowly, pressing her face into the tangle of Lexa's hair, nuzzling the back of neck and breathing in the sweet citrus smell of her body wash. Saturdays were the best days, because Lexa had decided that it was silly to go for a run and then go to Tae Kwon Do in the morning, so she actually stayed in bed past dawn. 

Lexa shifted, her shoulder pressing back into Clarke, and she loosened her grip to let her roll over so that they were face to face. "Good morning, Clarke," Lexa murmured against her lips.

"Good morning, Lexa," she whispered back, smiling into the kiss. 

"Happy birthday."

Clarke opened her eyes, her smile slipping. Had she somehow forgotten what day it was? How had she lost an entire weekend? If it was Monday, she probably needed to be up soon, because somehow the only section of a _required_ class that fit into her schedule met at 8 am on Mondays... which was exactly as much of a nightmare as it sounded. "It's not...?"

Lexa laughed. "Wow," she said. "The look on your face. No, it's not actually your birthday. But since your birthday falls on the worst day of the week imaginable, I've decided that it's your birthday all weekend long."

"Ahh," Clarke said. "I like the sound of that." She smirked, tugging at the drawstring of Lexa's pajama bottoms. "When do I get to unwrap my first present?" She didn't actually wait for Lexa to answer... and she hoped that Anya was either still asleep or had gone out for a run without Lexa, because she made damn sure that this was gift for both of them.

After, she pressed her lips to Lexa's chest, over her heart, then trailed kisses up her throat where her pulse still beat double time. "That was a nice present," she said. "Kind of a gift that keeps on giving, really..." 

She couldn't be sure, but she thought the flush in Lexa's cheeks wasn't just from the afterglow, and she knew that it was probably not exactly nice to tease her like that when she knew that it made her blush. But it was just the two of them, so it wasn't as if she was making her uncomfortable in front of other people... and it wasn't as if Lexa was any kind of prude, either. She was just a little more reserved, maybe, when it came to actually talking about the things that happened behind closed doors. 

"Breakfast?" Lexa suggested. She glanced at the clock. "I don't think we have time for pancakes, but I can do eggs and toast, and we can do something fancier tomorrow. Or maybe go out."

"Whatever you want," Clarke said. "I don't actually expect you to pamper me _all_ weekend."

"Well, I _do_ still have to go to class," Lexa said. "So that's at least an hour where I won't be."

Clarke pushed herself up on her elbow so that she could kiss her. "Do you want me to come with you, or can I stay here?"

"You can stay here," Lexa said. 

"Good," Clarke said. "Because if we're going to be celebrating all weekend, I should probably get the homework that I have to do done while you're out."

"Sounds like a plan," Lexa said, and pushed aside the covers to get out of bed, wrapping herself in her big blue bathrobe (which was apparently a police call box? some kind of nerd thing from Anya, anyway...) and going out into the kitchen, where Anya surprisingly wasn't.

Clarke followed her out and got the tea and coffee started while Lexa got out the pan for the eggs, and they fell easily into what had become a weekend morning routine for them, and Clarke couldn't help thinking how nice it would be if this could be an every morning routine. Maybe not at this leisurely a pace, but waking up together and sharing breakfast before they got on with their days. They were only a little over a month into the school year, and Clarke was already tired of living in the dorm. She wondered if it was too early to start looking into other options. Probably, since most of the places she was likely to be able to afford were almost certainly already occupied by students. It would probably have to wait until spring when seniors started to make other plans. 

"Penny for your thoughts?" Lexa asked, sliding a coin across the counter to her. 

Clarke picked it up and looked at it. "It's not even an American penny," she said. "I think I'm insulted."

"Canadian?" Lexa asked.

"Irish, actually," Clarke said. "Weird. How much is one euro cent worth?"

"I have no idea," Lexa said. "And I left my phone in the bedroom." She blew on her tea then took a sip. "Fun fact – Australia no longer has a one cent coin. They stopped making them... I'm not sure when, and then I guess they took all of the coins that had been taken out of circulation and melted them down to make the bronze medals for the Sydney Olympics."

"That's... actually really cool," Clarke said. "Heck of an upgrade."

Lexa laughed, and Clarke felt a lump form in her throat, because she still remembered when it had been rare to see Lexa smile, much less laugh, and now she seemed to do both so easily, at least around Clarke. 

"I never did get my penny's worth," Lexa said, her eyes sparkling. 

"I was just thinking about how beautiful you are," Clarke said, "and how much I love you."

"When our friends call us gross, they may have a point," Lexa said, deadpan, and then laughed again when Clarke slid off her stool to 'tackle' her in retaliation. 

After breakfast Lexa got ready for class and Clarke forced herself to shower and focus on her homework. When Lexa got back they had lunch, and spent the rest of the afternoon mostly just chilling out, although Lexa seemed to be getting a rather larger than usual number of texts. When Clarke asked if everything was all right, though, Lexa assured her that it was. 

"Okay," Lexa said around six. "It's time to go."

"Go?" Clarke asked. "Go where?"

"I can't tell you that," Lexa said. "But I promise you'll like it."

Clarke narrowed her eyes. "Is this your new thing?" she asked. "After the one for Master Gustus was such a success, you've decided that surprise parties are the thing to do?" She realized then that it sounded like she was complaining. "Not that I mind, of course," she said. "But you kind of just gave it away."

"Who says it's a party?" Lexa asked. "Maybe I'm just taking you out to dinner."

"We already ate."

"Not much," Lexa said. "Fine. Dessert."

"If we were just going out to get ice—"

"Are you going to argue with me, or are you going to come?" Lexa asked, putting her hands on her hips. 

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Clarke said. "You're cute when you pout."

"I'm not _pouting_ ," Lexa said, sticking out her lower lip.

Clarke kissed her. "We really _are_ gross," she said. "Just let me change."

"No," Lexa said. "Changing is not necessary."

"But I'm wearing my oldest jeans. I think they have paint on them," Clarke said. "If we're—"

"I'm telling you," Lexa said. "Changing is not necessary. Now come _on_." She grabbed Clarke's hand and pulled her toward the door, and within a few minutes they were in Lexa's car, headed Clarke had no idea where... until they pulled up in front of Lincoln's house. Which was huge, and managed not to have descended to the level of a frat house despite the number of people living in it largely due to the fact that that they were not all male. 

Clarke recognized a few of the cars in the driveway and along the street. "So it _is_ a party," she said, pointing to Raven's car, which was unmistakable given the fact that she'd actually painted a raven on the front panel. She said that it was a talisman and quite possibly the only thing keeping the car running at this point, and anyone who didn't like it could... keep their unsolicited opinions to themselves.

"I told them not to all park at the house," Lexa grumbled. They went up the walkway and pushed open the door, which wasn't locked. 

The front hallway had been blocked off by curtains, forming a path that they had to follow to get through to the rest of the house. A voice (that sounded like Raven trying to drop her voice by an octave) boomed through a speaker somewhere: "Clarke Griffin, this is your life."

That was when Clarke realize that strung up on wires all along the curtained corridor were pictures... of her. Lexa must have either raided the pictures that she'd taken from her mom's house or reached out to her mom directly... or maybe Octavia had, or Raven... to get them. By the front door they were pictures of her as a baby, and as they walked she grew up. None of the pictures were ridiculous or embarrassing. In fact, most of them were some of her favorites. There were some with her parents, and with Wells and other childhood friends. There were pictures of her riding horses and doing art and wearing her mother's lab coat and stethoscope, and there were pictures from prom and graduation, and then as they turned into the main room, there were pictures from college. There was orientation and all-nighters and goofy pictures with Octavia, and then there was Lexa... in almost every picture from spring semester, there was Lexa, and even when she wasn't in the picture, in many of them she had been there... quite possibly the one _taking_ the picture. 

"Surprise!" everyone yelled as she finally stepped through, and she looked around and saw all of her friends and a number of her acquaintances, and there were tables of art supplies and easels and tarps everywhere. The place had been turned into an art studio... except for the kitchen which appeared to have been converted into a bar and buffet of appetizer-type food. 

She looked at Lexa, her eyes wide. "You did this?"

"We did this," Lexa said. "I had the idea, but they all did most of the work today setting things up." 

"What... I don't even know what to say," Clarke said.

"I thought about having it at one of those paint bars," Lexa said, "but then I realized that one, who wants to do glorified paint-by-number, and two, that most of us are underage and I'm pretty sure those places are not fun if you're sober. So I decided we could make our own, and anyone can paint anything they want... and if they're lacking inspiration, we've got plenty of pictures for them to choose from." She gestured back towards the corridor.

"Oh no," Clarke said, laughing. "No no no you're not all painting me."

"Oh yes yes yes," Raven said, rubbing her hands together like the mad scientist that she really kind of was. "Just you wait. I've already got mine all planned out."

"Do you see what you've done?" Clarke asked Lexa. 

Lexa just grinned. "Also, as a party favor everyone gets a twenty dollar credit for Lyft, so that no one has to be a designated driver is they don't want to be. And if you didn't drive here, well, you still get one because you never know when you might need it." 

"That's actually really brilliant," Clarke said softly. "Good thinking."

Lexa just nodded, acknowledging what was really behind her seeming generosity. It would spare them any confrontations at the end of the night. "Can I get you a drink?"

"I would love one," Clarke said. 

"What can I get you?" a girl asked them when they went over to the counter that was set up as a bar. Clarke was pretty sure that she was one of the people who lived here, and she had met her once in passing but she couldn't remember her name, except that it was something unusual. "Sorry to crash your party, by the way, but Lincoln asked me to play bartender, since I’m, well, a bartender."

"And you're missing out on working on a Saturday night?" Clarke asked. "I'm sorry!"

"Currently between jobs, actually," she said. "Some asshole got a little handsy so I threw his beer in his face. Boss didn't like that. Told the boss he could get fucked. Boss _really_ didn't like that, so..." She shrugged. "I'm Echo, by the way."

"Clarke," she said. "This is Lexa."

"I know Lexa," Echo said. "Or at least I know _of_ Lexa. She's the girl who kicks Lincoln's ass on a regular basis." She grinned. "Anyway – what would you like, birthday girl?"

"Surprise me," Clarke said. 

Echo raised an eyebrow, and then smirked. "All right..." she said. "You asked for it."

When she handed Clarke her drink, she took one sip and knew she was in trouble. She didn't know what the drink was called, or if it had a name, but she could tell two things right away: it had a very high alcohol content, and it went down really easy. 

"Have fun," Echo said. 

Someone turned up the music, and soon everyone was eating and drinking and dancing and painting... sometimes all at the same time, which was interesting to watch. Clarke picked out a canvas for herself, but it was hard to really focus when she wanted to make sure that she said hi to everyone and thanked them for coming. After a while, though, people seemed to settle in a bit, and some of the chatter died down as they actually started to work on whatever they'd decided to paint, although there were occasional shouts and bursts of laughter. Raven dragged her canvas outside, and Clarke was tempted to go out to see what she was up to, but Raven wagged a finger at her and shook her head. "You don't get to ruin the surprise," she said.

"Fiiiine," Clarke groaned, and went to go see what Lexa was up to instead... but Lexa planted herself firmly in front of her canvas, blocking it with her body. 

"Nope," she said. "Not yet."

"Ugh," Clarke said. "You all suck." But she kissed Lexa anyway, and Lexa kissed her back for longer than she'd ever let her before when other people were around, but then her lips tasted of rum and coke so that probably explained it. Clarke tried to peek over her shoulder as she pulled away, but Lexa caught her at it, and didn't relent even when Clarke pouted at her. 

A couple hours later, people seemed to have reached the ends of their attention spans, and so they moved all of the easels around to make a gallery, and they wandered through. The impromptu critiques that people offered up were almost all hilarious, or maybe that was just the alcohol talking. But nothing that anyone said was mean-spirited – problems with proportion and perspective were referred to as Picasso-esque – and even if most of them weren't particularly _good_ , they were all obviously painted with love.

Raven brought her canvas in from outside, and Clarke started laughing as soon as she saw it. Leave it to Raven to decide to go the Jackson Pollock route. "See?" she said. "The yellow is for your hair, and the blue is for your eyes..." 

"It's awesome," Clarke said. "I love it."

"I know," Raven said smugly. 

Finally things started to wind down, and people started to leave. Clarke found herself being hugged by person after person, and she thanked them all for coming. When it was just a few of them left, the core of their group, they set about cleaning up and turning the place back into a house. 

"So?" Octavia asked. "Best birthday ever?"

"Best birthday ever," Clarke agreed. "Thank you so much."

"Thank Lexa," Octavia said. "It was really all her. We just did the set up."

"Oh I will," Clarke said, grinning. 

Octavia laughed. "TMI, Griffin."

"I didn't _say_ anything," Clarke said. 

"You didn't need to."

Clarke just grinned. "I'll see you tomorrow?"

"Yeah," Octavia said. 

Clarke hugged her, then went to find Lexa. She slid her arms around her from behind, resting her cheek against the back of her shoulder. Lexa rested one hand over Clarke's, tapping her phone with the other to summon a ride. 

When they got home, they tumbled into bed, still paint-streaked and buzzed. Clarke twined herself around Lexa and rubbed their noses together. "Thank you," she said. "That was..." She shook her head. Words like awesome, amazing, and wonderful didn't cover it. "Thank you."

"Happy birthday, Clarke," Lexa said. "Here's to many more."

"I'll drink to that," Clarke said, but she didn't actually have a drink, so she just kissed Lexa instead.


	150. Lexa

The morning of the election Lexa and Anya decided to change up the route of their usual morning run so that it took them to their polling place. It made sense to get it done as early as possible; with so much on the line it seemed likely that the lines to vote would only get longer as the day went on. As it was, they arrived fifteen minutes before the polls even opened and they weren't the first in line. They took their place and waited, listening to people talking around them. Lexa glanced at Anya and rolled her eyes at the people who actually seemed worried about the outcome; as far as she was concerned it was already a foregone conclusion. Despite the fact that the media had given him far more coverage than he deserved, when it came right down to it, the voters would realize that Trump had no experience, no qualifications, and that he had actually failed at every single thing he'd ever done, and they would vote for the only logical choice. Sure, there would be a swath of red down the middle of the country; there always was. But the so-called coastal elite would outweigh them.

They had to.

She filled out her ballot and got her sticker, and they ran home, quiet in the chilly air that rasped their lungs if they tried to talk. After a long hot shower she got dressed, affixing the red, white and blue 'I Voted' sticker over her heart. It seemed a little silly, to display it proudly like a child who'd gone to the doctor and behaved well enough to be rewarded, but she was sure that she wouldn't be the only one. And silly or not, she wanted people to know that she took her responsibility as an American citizen seriously. 

After breakfast she went to class, meeting up with Clarke afterward. "You already went?" Clarke asked, seeing her sticker, and then smiled crookedly. "Of course you already went. You were probably first in line."

"Eighth, actually," Lexa said, and Clarke laughed. 

"I'm going to go after my next class," she said. "Octavia's professor actually canceled class so that they could go vote, but she already did so she just gets the afternoon off."

"Absentee?" Lexa asked.

Clarke nodded. "There were things she wanted to be able to vote on in her home state, so she stayed registered to vote there."

"Smart," Lexa said. "I voted absentee freshman year because I wasn't sure what the requirements were to register to vote here; I didn't know if college students were eligible or if you had to live here a certain amount of time out of the year or what. Now it's easy."

"I would ask you to go with me, but I don't want anyone thinking that you're trying to vote twice," Clarke said, rolling her eyes. 

"I can stay outside," Lexa said.

"It's too cold," Clarke told her. "I'll be okay on my own. I'll meet you after?"

"All right," Lexa said, but then something came up – an emergency meeting of her group for a project, and she hated the class and the professor and the group just on principle – and she had to cancel. 'I'll see you tonight,' she promised via text. 'After TKD.' 

After class she listened to one of the moms try to hurry her kids – teenagers who trained in the adult class – so that they could get home and watch as the results started to come in. The polls had only just closed in most states on the east coast, and wouldn't close for hours yet in other parts of the country, so it would be too early to truly call anything for a while, but she said something about how their father was really worried. 

Lexa still didn't think there was anything to worry about, but she kept her mouth shut. It wasn't her place. She just put her gear back in her bag and slid her feet into her shoes, then after a quick hug goodbye for Aden, went down to Anya's car and threw her bag into the trunk before climbing into the passenger's seat. 

"I invited Lincoln and Octavia over," Anya said, "and I'd already invited Raven, who asked if it was okay if Gina came, and that probably means Bellamy, too," she said. 

"It's fine," Lexa said. "Clarke's coming over too."

"I figured," Anya said. "I guess it's kind of a party."

"I swear I've been to more of those in the past few months than in the entire rest of my life combined," Lexa joked, except it wasn't really a joke because it was largely true. She _had_ been to – and hosted – more parties recently than she'd participated in for most of her childhood. It wasn't a bad thing, and it was starting to not even feel like a strange thing, to surround herself with people that she cared about, and who cared about her... or at least cared about the people that she cared about. Yes, there was the chance that letting people in would lead to being hurt, but it was better than the constant ache of loneliness that she'd lived with for so long that she'd stopped even really feeling it. 

They got home and showered quickly, and by the time that she was out and changed into comfy leggings and a hoodie, people had started to arrive. 

"I brought some snacks," Gina said. "I hate coming to a party empty-handed." 

"Thank you," Anya said, and found bowls to dump the chips and pretzels in, and they set things up on the coffee table and the breakfast bar, and soon everyone was there, piled onto the couch and chairs in the living room, the TV tuned to CNN but muted for now. It would be a while before anything really happened, and listening to the same predictions over and over again was tedious. 

Clarke tucked herself against Lexa's side in the chair that had once been her father's, lacing their fingers together and squeezing. Lexa squeezed back, looking over at her. "You okay?" she asked softly. 

"Just... worried, I guess," Clarke said. "I wish I didn't feel like I had to be."

"It'll be fine," Lexa reassured her. "People aren't _that_ stupid."

And for a while, it looked like she was right, as the results from the east coast states started to come in. The northeast was pretty solidly blue, although apparently some backwoods portion of Maine had forgotten that they were in New England and not Arkansas, and it looked like they might end up with one of their electoral votes going to the Republican candidate. Which led to a preaching to the choir conversation about how outdated and generally bullshit the Electoral College system was, and how it gave some of the states with small populations undue influence in presidential elections, because they were guaranteed two votes no matter what, and the number of votes given to the states that actually had people in them hadn't been adjusted to make things more proportionate, at least not any time recently. One person did not equal one vote... and as they watched the map of the United States light up with more and more red so that it looked like the entire middle of the country was bleeding, as the balances tipped and the numbers started to pile up, Lexa started to feel twitchy.

She looked around and saw everyone else either coming to the same realization, or having the fears they'd already had confirmed. Under different circumstances it might have amused her to know that for once she wasn't the most cynical, the most pessimistic one in the room, after so long being the dark cloud over nearly every occasion, but it wasn't funny now. Not even a little bit. Conversation was muted, expressions were grim, and the snacks sat forgotten on the table. 

As she looked at the face of everyone in the room, she realized that everyone one of them had something to lose here. They all had a horse in this race. Whatever privilege they might have was counterbalanced and maybe – probably – outweighed by factors outside of their control. If the country actually voted into office this racist, misogynist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic... the list went on, and her stomach twisted... they were all facing the possibility of their lives becoming much, much harder. Whether it was the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation, economic status, disability... they were all screwed, one way or another. And it was sinking in that her so-called foregone conclusion wasn't just not foregone, it was likely wrong. The election that she had assumed would be a landslide was becoming a slippery slope the other way.

"Lexa," Clarke whispered. "You're crushing my hand."

"I'm sorry," Lexa said, loosening her grip. "I just..."

"I know."

The experts crunched the numbers, over and over again, giving scenarios and likelihoods, and there was still a chance, a small chance, if the right states went blue... But Lexa's hope was flickering, and she thought about grabbing the remote and shutting it off or at least muting it, but the others were still watching, expressions mostly blank.

It was after one in the morning and there still wasn't a clear winner, and they were saying that it was likely that they wouldn't have one tonight, and finally Gina and Bellamy decided that it was time to go home. "Class in the morning," Gina said. 

"And I have work," Bellamy added. "Thanks for having us."

Octavia got up and hugged her brother, and Raven hugged Gina, and they watched them go. "I guess we should..." Octavia started, but her voice trailed off like she didn't know what to say, or like she didn't want to say it, or Lexa didn't even know. Because clearly she didn't know anything anymore. 

"You're welcome to stay," Anya said. "I have it on good authority that the couch is pretty comfortable."

"Okay," Octavia said, sitting back down again, curling against Lincoln. 

Another hour slid by, and still there wasn't a winner, and Clinton wasn't conceding and that was something, wasn't it? As long as she didn't give in, as long as she didn't give up, there was still hope, wasn't there?

"I can't watch this anymore," Anya finally said. "I'm going to bed." She got up, trailing her hand over Lexa's shoulder and giving it a squeeze on her way past. No one said anything when Raven got up and followed her. 

"Should we...?" Clarke asked, glancing toward Lexa's room.

"I'm not going to sleep," Lexa said. Staying up and watching wouldn't change anything and she knew it. But she couldn't stand the thought of going to sleep and waking up to find that the world had been turned on its head, that she'd slept through the beginning of the end. And she doubted she would sleep anyway, not in any kind of meaningful or restful way. 

"Okay," Clarke said. But she got up and went to the linen closet and got blankets for Octavia and Lincoln, and for them, and they wrapped themselves up, making themselves as comfortable as they could... which wasn't all that comfortable, under the circumstances. 

At some point Lexa dozed, and when she woke again an hour or two later, she looked at the map on the TV screen, saw the massacre that had happened one vote at a time, saw the numbers and the writing on the wall... and started to cry. Because she hadn't seen this coming. Maybe she should have. She'd lived in that vast expanse of red more than once; she knew that it was a very different place than the coast. She knew that there were huge numbers of people who had lived there all their lives, like their parents and their parents' parents, and back and back for generations. They'd never left their towns, never seen any of the rest of the world or met anyone who wasn't just like them. And lack of familiarity bred fear, especially when it was spoon fed to you by the media, and...

... and now the tables were turned, and now she was the one who was afraid. Just when she'd started to have hope, just when things had started to feel like maybe, finally, they were changing for the better... that was all gone. Erased in a single day, in a single night...

But that wasn't true, either, and maybe her faith in humanity had been misplaced, maybe she'd believed too much in people knowing right from wrong, good from evil... or maybe it was just that most people's ideas of those things weren't the same as hers. The truth that she had to face now was that these ideas that had been Trump's platform, these ideas and ideals that so many – too many – people had voted for, had always been there, had always been in the hearts of people, and now they were just being validated. Now they were being told that yes, it's okay to think that way, to feel that way. It's okay to hate people who are different than you, and in doing so, you're making America great again!

Tears burned her eyes and streaked down her cheeks, and she tried to swallow them down, tried to stop them, but she couldn't. She felt Clarke wake and shift beside her, and she freed one hand to swipe at her eyes hastily, but it was no use. There was no stopping this now...

Clarke didn't ask her if she was all right. She was smart enough to know that that was a pointless question with an obvious answer. No, she wasn't all right. None of them were. She just grabbed a tissue from the box on the end table and used it to blot Lexa's eyes, then handed her another to blow her nose. But the tears kept coming, and kept coming, and finally Clarke, too, gave up on stopping them. She just put her arms around Lexa and held her tight and kissed her temple and her cheek, and her lips when they were offered, and they clung to each other in the darkness that was lit only by the TV that told them that their fate was all but sealed.

"What happens now?" Lexa asked.

"I don't know," Clarke said. "I don't know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought about just ignoring this part of the world, letting their AU be one where they don't have to worry on a daily basis about whether the world is going to end today... but I guess I'm just not that nice. I do promise that things won't get super political, but I couldn't just ignore this. Not when it would affect all of them in pretty significant ways.


	151. Clarke

Lexa had gotten up to go the bathroom, and Clarke reached for her phone. She didn't expect to have any messages since everyone she was closest to was here, but she checked anyway, and was surprised to find that her mother had texted her.

**MOM:** How are you?

The time on it was from only a few minutes before. A glance at the clock made Clarke suspect that her mother had been woken up by Vera to feed her or change a dirty diaper or something. She was probably already headed back to bed, but Clarke texted back anyway.

**CLARKE:** I've been better.

**MOM:** Haven't we all?

She could almost hear her mother's voice saying the words, the sarcastic laugh that would have preceded them. 

**CLARKE:** Lexa's crying.

**MOM:** I don't blame her. I won't lie and say I haven't shed a few tears myself.

If the words were meant to be reassuring, they weren't. Clarke didn't want to hear that her mother was upset, too. She wanted her to tell her that it was okay, that somehow, it would all be okay, that this was all a mistake, or a fluke, that there was some way out of this. Wasn't that what mothers were supposed to do? Make the world safe for their children?

But she wasn't a child anymore. She was her mother's child, yes, and she always would be... but she wasn't actually a child, and she never would be again. Maybe it was knowing that there were things that parents couldn't fix, things that they couldn't protect you from, maybe it was that knowledge that was what really made you an adult. 

**CLARKE:** I'm scared.

She hit send before she could second guess herself and erase it. She needed to say it to someone, and right now Lexa wasn't the right person to say it to, because she was scared too, whether she would admit it or not. Maybe – probably – she was scared in a way that she never really had been before, and maybe that was why this was hitting her so hard. Like up until now she'd been able to cling to the idea that the world was mostly an okay place, or at least this country was, and that sure, they had problems but those problems could be fixed. Like she'd honestly believed that people were mostly good... and now here they were facing incontrovertible proof that no, they really weren't.

**MOM:** I know, sweetie. Is there anything I can do?

**CLARKE:** No.

**MOM:** If you think of anything, please let me know. For you or any of your friends. 

**CLARKE:** Thanks.

She set her phone back down as Lexa came back from the bathroom, her eyes red-rimmed, bloodshot, and her nose pink and raw from all of the tissues she'd gone through. She tucked herself back in next to Clarke, pulling the blankets tight around them, and rested their foreheads together. "This sucks," she whispered. 

"Yeah."

But at least the tears had stopped temporarily, and they finally switched off the TV and closed their eyes to try to sleep. 

It was only a few hours, barely more than a nap, but at least it made the world seem a little more tolerable, a little easier to face. Raven dragged herself off to class, but Clarke skipped hers. It didn't feel right, leaving Lexa when she was obviously still standing right on the edge of an emotional cliff. She hadn't missed the class yet that semester, and she doubted that anything of consequence would be accomplished anyway. It seemed likely that they weren't the only ones left reeling. 

Anya also had a class to go to, and since she was the TA she couldn't skip it. "I'll be back soon," she said, mostly to Lexa, but it was Clarke who nodded. Anya frowned, but left anyway. 

The four of them that remained had cereal for breakfast, but Lexa barely even poked at hers, and Clarke didn't have the energy to try to cajole her into eating more. They put in a movie to have a break from the unrelenting (and unchanging) news cycle, but none of them paid any attention to it. Raven came back with Gina in tow again (but no Bellamy, because he was at work, and Clarke couldn't imagine having to just get up and go about your normal life like it was any other day) and they settled back on the couch. No one said anything. 

Finally Lexa pushed herself up. "I'm going to shower," she said. 

"Okay," Clarke said. If the place hadn't been full of other people, she would have offered to go with her, but she suspected that Lexa might have been going not because she actually needed a shower (although maybe she felt like she did; the entire world felt tainted with corruption) but because she just wanted a little time away from everyone and everything. 

A few minutes later Anya came in. "Look who I found," she said, pushing open the door further to let someone past... and Clarke blinked when she realized it was her mother.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, not meaning for the words to come out as sharply as they did. 

"I thought you might – you _all_ might – need a mom," she said. "And I know that chicken soup doesn't fix everything, but I thought it might not hurt."

Clarke felt her eyes fill with tears, and she got up out of the chair and threw herself into her mother's arms, the hug awkward because Abby was holding a big bag of groceries. Anya grabbed it before she could drop it and took it to the kitchen. With both hands free, her mother hugged her back tightly. 

"Where's Veelu?" Clarke asked. 

"At home with Marcus," Abby said. "He can handle taking care of her himself for a day." She smiled, giving her another squeeze before letting her go... only to be immediately hugged by Octavia, and then Raven. "How is everyone?"

They shrugged and made noises that basically meant nothing, but Abby didn't seem to expect anything different. She looked around and her forehead furrowed. "Where's Lexa?"

"In the shower," Clarke said. 

"For how long?" Anya asked. 

Now it was Clarke's turn to frown. It seemed like a strange question, but she doubted that Anya would ask for no reason. "Maybe ten minutes?" she said. "She'd only just started the water running a few minutes before you got here."

"Okay," Anya said, apparently reassured in some way. She began to unpack the bag of food, and Abby went to help her, setting out all of the ingredients to make the chicken soup that had been the only thing Clarke would eat when she was sick when she was younger... and the only thing that she wanted to eat when she was sick even now. 

It was another ten minutes before Lexa emerged from the bathroom, her hair braided back from her face. She looked around, blinking like she could tell that something had changed but she wasn't quite sure what.

"My mom came," Clarke said, moving to wrap her arm around Lexa's waist, drawing her in against her side. "She's making soup."

"Like those books," Lexa said. 

"What books?"

"Chicken Soup for the Soul," Lexa said. "I think the school counselor gave me one of them when I was living with my grandparents. 'Chicken Soup for the Grieving Child' or something like that. They have one for just about everything."

"'Chicken Soup for the Just Got Fired Even Though It Was Your Own Damn Fault,'" Raven quipped. 

"'Chicken Soup for the Stubbed Toe'," Octavia chimed in. 

"'Chicken Soup for the Overworked and Underpaid TA Who Has to Grade Your Papers and Who Knows How to Google So She Can Tell In Less Than Two Minutes That You Plagiarized Half This Paper You Asshole,'" Anya said from the kitchen.

They laughed. Even Lexa smiled, and Clarke was relieved to see it. 

Abby turned around. "Hey, sweetheart," she said, putting down the knife she'd been using to chop carrots and wiping her hands on a towel before coming over. She held out her hands, and after a second's hesitation Lexa let herself be hugged, but not for long. Abby let her go, but her hands stayed on her upper arms. "I know," she said softly. "Today, we mourn. Tomorrow, we pick ourselves up and figure out how to fight."

Lexa nodded, and she seemed almost relieved, although Clarke wasn't entirely sure what it was in what her mother had said that had actually eased Lexa's tension, if only a little. Maybe it was the fact that she'd been given permission to feel what she was feeling, that Abby had told her that it was okay to feel grief for what had happened, was still happening... would continue happening unless someone pulled a rabbit out of a magical top hat or the Electoral College did something other than just rubber stamp this election that it was becoming more and more clear had not, in fact, been won by Trump, if one went by the popular vote. 

But that wasn't how America worked, of course. 

Clarke wasn't sure that America worked at all right now. And maybe this would be the catalyst for change that needed to happen, that had needed to happen for a long time... but not today. Nothing was going to happen today.

Soon the house started to fill with the smell of soup, and when it was finally ready, Abby ladled it out into bowls for all of them and they sat down to eat. And no, chicken soup – even her mother's chicken soup – couldn't cure everything. It couldn't really _cure_ anything. But it helped, a little, and so did the fact that her mother had gotten into the car probably almost before dawn and driven here to see her, to help her and her friends through this.

People came and went as classes came up, but Lexa didn't go to any of hers, and neither did Clarke or Octavia. She half expected a lecture from her mother, but if she realized that they were skipping, she didn't say anything. Maybe she knew how impossible it would have been to focus. Maybe she understood that sometimes you just needed a break, a mental health day. 

"It just feels pointless," Octavia said to no one in particular. "You go out and you do what you're supposed to do, you vote, and still this happens. You do the right thing and still you lose, and yeah, people are already talking about digging in your heels and resisting and all of that, but... what's the point? What good will it do? We don't actually get a say. Our voices, our votes, don't actually matter."

Abby looked at her with a sigh and a grim smile. "That's not entirely true," she said, "but I understand why you feel that way. You don't get a direct say in what happens. You can speak your mind all you want, make all of the compelling arguments that you want, but in the end, it's someone else casting the vote."

"Yesterday," Lexa said, "it made me happy seeing everyone with their stickers saying that they voted. Now I'm going to look around and there's not going to be any stickers, and even if there was, you wouldn't know who they voted for. You don't know who the enemy is."

"They're not—" Abby started to say, but Raven cut her off.

"They're not the enemy?" Raven asked. "Really? Because the person they voted into office, and more than half of Congress, hates my queer, brown, female, disabled ass. They would rather I just ceased to exist. So don't you dare tell me that they're not the enemy."

Abby looked at her, and if she had anything to say in response to that, she obviously thought better of saying it. 

Anya put her hand lightly on Raven's back. "The only consolation – and it's not much – is that this area, this city... we were solidly blue. So just walking down the street... probably most of the people you meet don't hate you. Right here, we're probably safe."

"Yeah, forgive me if I find that cold comfort at best," Raven said. "It's bad enough being a woman in a field that's dominated by men. This isn't going to make it any easier."

"At least it makes one thing easier for me," Lexa said. 

Clarke looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"I wasn't sure what area of law I wanted to focus on," she said. "Now it's an easy choice: civil rights. Because we're going to need it. Even if he's only in office for four years, even if I'm still in school, all of the damage that he manages to do... we'll be cleaning it up for years. And I want to believe - _need_ to believe – that this is the last gasps of a dying... regime? I'm not sure what the right word would be. And that after this we'll find another way, a better way, and that if we can't trust the executive branch, and we can't rely on Congress, that it's going to be the courts that will have to keep fighting for the people. So that's what I'll have to do. That's where I'll have to be. For as long as it takes."

Clarke was glad to hear her talking that way, glad that she still had some fight in her. Seeing her reduced to tears, just completely defeated, had been more frightening than Clarke really wanted to admit, because Lexa never showed weakness. But maybe that was the wrong way to think about it. Maybe tears weren't weakness. Maybe the ability to grieve, the ability to feel that kind of empathy and to recognize the trouble that they were all in, was its own kind of strength, as long as it led to action rather than despair. 

After a dinner that was mostly more soup, Lexa, Anya, Octavia and Lincoln went to Tae Kwon Do, and Raven went home with Gina, leaving Clarke and Abby alone in a house where neither of them lived. 

"I should probably be getting back," Abby said. 

"Thank you for coming," Clarke said. "It... it meant – means – a lot."

"Of course," Abby said, pulling her into a hug. "You're my daughter, and they're your—" She stopped for a second like she was considering her next words, and then said, "—they're your family, too. Anything that I can do to make this a little bit easier for all of you, I will. I've seen more of the cycles of politics than any of you have. I've seen things get better and things get worse. Which isn't to say that this can just be dismissed as another bump in the road; it can't. It shouldn't be. What is happening, what is going to happen... it's not normal, and the last thing that any of us should do is accept it. We're going to have to fight. We're going to have to march and protest and call our representatives and make sure our voices are heard. This isn't going to be easy, and it's not going to be fun, but it's going to be necessary for people of conscience to step up and not back down."

She smiled at Clarke, stroking back her hair. "At the same time, though... it's going to be important for us to take care of ourselves and each other. There may be times when you're going to need to take a step back and say that today someone else is going to have to do the fighting. That's okay. You're not going to be able to champion every cause. You're not going to be able to be everywhere, do everything. And I know that that's going to be hard for you, because you're the kind of person who wants to save everyone. But it's like the safety briefings that they give you at the beginning of every airplane flight – you need to put on your own mask before you help the people around you. I need you to remember that, okay?"

"Okay," Clarke agreed. It was easier said than done, and she knew it, and she knew that her mom knew it too. But she would try. And she trusted that her friends, that Lexa, would look out for her, too. They would tell her when she needed to take a step back. They would remind her that sometimes you needed to have a little fun. 

They would all have to do it for each other, she was sure. They would have to learn to pick and choose which battles to fight, and which they would have to leave to someone else. They might not always all feel that the same things needed to be fought for, and they might not always agree on how. She hoped that they would be able to keep enough common ground, though, that it didn't somehow lead to fractures in their group. In their family. 

"If you need anything, call me," Abby said, hugging her again. "I don't care what time it is, you call me. Okay?"

"Okay," Clarke said again. 

"And the same goes for your friends. I know that some of them have their own parents, but I'm more than willing to lend an ear or a shoulder to any of them."

Clarke nodded and walked her down to her car. "Oh, and tell Lexa I left the chicken soup recipe for her. She asked for it way back when Vera was born and I never remembered to give it to her."

She smiled. "I will." She hugged Abby one last time, then watched her drive away. She went back to the condo and was glad when Anya and Lexa got home a little while later. They showered, and Anya never emerged from her room, probably exhausted from what had almost certainly been one of the longest days of all of their lives. 

Lexa beckoned Clarke to follow her into her room, and soon they were cuddled together under the covers, hands and legs entwined. "How was class?" Clarke asked.

Lexa face flickered to a smile. "We've renamed the practice dummy," she said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. After another stupid orange man that we'd like to punch in the face."

Clarke laughed. "That sounds stress-relieving," she said.

"A little," Lexa admitted. "Aden asked me how I was. I almost started crying again."

"Why?" Clarke asked. 

"Because _he_ shouldn't have to ask _me_ how I am," Lexa said. "I'm the one who's supposed to be looking out for him, not the other way around. Kids shouldn't have to take care of adults." Her tone had slid into bitterness and Clarke was pretty sure that this wasn't just about Aden. She wondered then if Lexa had reached out to her father for some reason, or if he had reached out to her, but she wasn't sure that it would be a good idea to ask. If Lexa wanted to talk about it, she would bring it up herself. "I hate that this is the world that he's going to be growing up in," Lexa said after a few seconds. "I hate it."

"I know," Clarke said. "But we're going to do everything we can to make sure that it doesn't last, and that we give him, and Veelu, and everyone else too young to have had a say in this a better one."

"Promise?" Lexa asked.

"Promise," Clarke answered, and pressed her lips to Lexa's to seal it... and let herself take comfort in what came after.


	152. Lexa

Anya set a plate in front of Lexa, and she dutifully picked up her fork and put a bite in her mouth, chewing slowly. Eating had gone back to being a chore, a necessary evil that brought no enjoyment... but that pretty much described everything at this point. Even when Clarke was around, everything felt muted, blunted, and she hated the feeling, but also felt helpless to shake it. It was like the summer after Costia died all over again, except this time it felt like she'd lost her entire country, not just one person.

"Are you going home with Clarke for Thanksgiving, or is she staying here?" Anya asked. 

Lexa shrugged. "I don't know what we're doing," she said. "Or what I'm doing, and she's doing." She assumed that whatever they decided, they would do together, but since they hadn't talked about it, she didn't actually know that for sure. Since the night of the election, they were together as much as they could be; Clarke had basically moved in, although most of her stuff was still in her dorm room. She kept a couple of outfits here (only semi-intentionally) so there were some days that Lexa was pretty sure that she didn't even go to the dorm at all, and she wondered if that was something that the school tracked or if they'd even noticed Clarke's absence. She went to her classes, and that was what really mattered, right? They could say that freshman and sophomores had to live on campus, but they couldn't actually enforce that they had to sleep there, could they?

"I was thinking about doing Thanksgiving here for anyone who doesn't have anywhere else to go," Anya said. "Fair warning."

"As if we have anything to be thankful for," Lexa grumbled. 

"We have each other," Anya said, her tone too bright and perky, and Lexa wadded up her napkin and threw it at her. But she couldn't help smiling, at least a little, and she knew that that was probably what Anya had been trying for. "Really, it's just an excuse for me to cook a big meal for people who otherwise might end up eating Ramen."

"Does it have to be turkey?" Lexa asked. "Turkey's not even _good_."

"It doesn't have to be," Anya said, "although I suspect there might be people who would disappointed if it wasn't. People with more traditional upbringings." Of course there had always been a big Thanksgiving at whatever base they were living on when they were out of country, or at least at the ones where Lexa had lived, but her father had rarely taken her, and the food had always been mediocre at best. 

"Who do we know who's had a traditional upbringing?" Lexa asked.

"Clarke?" Anya said. 

"She might be the only one," Lexa said. 

"Lincoln, maybe," Anya said. "And Nat always cooked if she was around. She was really into holidays. She came from a big family."

"Why didn't she spend it with them, then?" Lexa asked. "Or did she?"

Anya shook her head. "They pretty much disowned her when she joined the military," she said. "She always said that if she'd been a boy they would have thrown her a parade, but because she was a girl, she was going against the laws of nature or something."

"Was it because of the military thing or because of the gay thing?" Lexa asked. 

Anya frowned. "I don't know," she said. "Honestly, she never really said much about her sexuality, or who knew about it or how much."

"But she and your mom...?"

Anya lifted her hands. "I honestly don't know," she said. "I assume, but I don't actually know for sure. Which I know sounds crazy, but think about how little time they actually spent in the same place at the same time."

"There's that," Lexa said. 

"And even when they did, they kept separate rooms," Anya said. "Whether they _slept_ in separate rooms, I don't know. It's... I never really thought much about it until I got older, and then I still didn't think too much about it because I was spending so much time trying to figure myself out, and why I didn't feel the way other people did about things." She smiled crookedly. 

"I always knew," Lexa said. "Even before I had a word for it, a label, I knew that I was attracted to girls, that it was girls I wanted to spend my time with, girls that I wanted to like me. I would fixate on one girl or another, and I hated it when she didn't like me best... or when she didn't notice me at all." 

"Clarke definitely likes you best," Anya said, "so I think you're good now."

"I know," Lexa said, and she did. It was pretty much the only thing that really felt good and strong and solid in her life right now. It was the one thing that she wasn't worried was going to implode or self-destruct... or that wouldn't simply be worn away by time and tide. 

"Anyway, you know she's welcome to stay if she wants to," Anya said. "Raven's coming, obviously, and some of my grad school friends. Oh, ask your friend Luna, too, if you want to."

"I will," Lexa said, "after I talk to Clarke."

She didn't have to wait long; they were just finishing putting the dishes in the dishwasher when Lexa heard the jangling of Clarke's keys at the door, and muffled swearing. She went to open it, and Clarke tumbled inside, her arms full of books, which slid out of her grasp and Lexa was glad for her martial arts-trained reflexes which allowed her to jump out of the way before any of them landed on her bare feet.

She leaned down to scoop the fallen books up and set them on the coffee table, then came back over to take one of the bags that Clarke was carrying from her. "Laundry," Clarke admitted, her cheeks flushed. "I know I could do it at the dorm, but—"

"But it's free here, and no one minds," Lexa said. "Do you want me to start it for you?"

"No," Clarke said. "I can do it myself." 

"Okay," Lexa said easily. She didn't want to make things awkward, but she honestly wasn't sure why Clarke was getting embarrassed. It wasn't as if she didn't just gather up whatever clothes were in her room at the end of the week and wash them regardless of who owned them. She'd cleared out a drawer for Clarke in her dresser just to have a place to put the things that she left behind. 

Clarke set down the rest of her books and went to shove the clothing into the washer. Once that was done, she settled down on the couch, sifting through the books. "Have I mentioned that I hate research papers?" she asked. "Because I hate research papers. I feel as if the term 'research paper' is a misnomer to begin with, because it's not as if you're actually doing or saying or writing anything new. You're just taking a bunch of stuff that other people have done or said or wrote and regurgitating it."

"And hoping that you changed the words around enough that you don't get caught for plagiarism," Anya said. "Which is apparently surprisingly hard for some people." She rolled her eyes. 

Clarke snorted. "And then they want you to have a certain number of sources, and I swear they pad the number because they know that for every three they request, one of them is going to be something that you barely glanced at, that you pulled one sentence from, quite possibly out of context, to quote just so you can count it as a source."

"I believe that on Tumblr someone referred to those as the 'Works Sighted'," Anya said.

Lexa smiled, but then her expression turned bitter. "It's not as if most of the professors actually want to teach us to _think_ ," she said. "That would be dangerous, especially with the new world order that's about to take control. Don't think, don't ask questions, just do as you're told."

"Reason number I lost count that I'm glad that I didn't enlist," Anya said. Lexa knew that she'd been talking to her parents about it, and that at least one of them (she wasn't sure which but she was pretty sure it was one of her moms) was considering (and Anya was gently encouraging them toward) retiring. They had all always assumed that they were in for life, but with the balance having tipped toward a madman, the choice seemed to be get out now while they could do so honorably, or risk being court martialed later for refusing to obey an unconscionable order... or following the order and having to live with that for the rest of their life. 

Lexa hadn't bothered to talk to her father about it. She knew what his answer would be.

Later, after Clarke had made enough of a dent in her research that she didn't feel quite so overwhelmed, they went to Lexa's room, but they didn't sleep right away. Clarke sat up sketching, something she tried to do every night just to keep in the habit and to help herself relax, and Lexa curled beside her, reading. She was a few pages in when she remembered that she was supposed to be asking her about Thanksgiving. She rolled over to look at her. "Were you planning to go home for the break?" she asked. 

Clarke looked up from her sketch. "No," she said. "Why?"

"Anya is planning to cook for people who aren't going anywhere else. I guess she just wanted to know whether we would be here or not."

"Ah," Clarke said. "Do you want to be here?"

"I don't know how I feel about having a house full of strangers," Lexa said, "but I guess it turned out pretty well the first time, so..." She smiled, and Clarke smiled back, kissing the tips of her fingers and then reaching out to press them gently against Lexa's lips, because it would have been too awkward to lean all the way down to kiss her properly (and there would be time for that later). 

"Okay," Clarke said. "Octavia tried to get me to come home with her, but I politely declined. She's bringing Lincoln home with her for the first time, and I guess she decided she wanted to have me there as a buffer or something. I don't even know."

"I thought that her mom had already met Lincoln back at Bellamy's graduation," Lexa said. 

"She did," Clarke said. "I don't know what Octavia is nervous about. I think for once it's actually less about her mom and her state of mind for once, and more about Lincoln seeing where and how she grew up."

Lexa looked at Clarke curiously, waiting for her to elaborate if she was going to. 

"Her house is tiny, and sometimes there are projects that her mother starts when she's on an upswing and never finishes. It's... it can be kind of a disaster. We all know that Lincoln isn't going to think any differently about Octavia after seeing where she comes from that he does now, but I guess I can see where it could feel awkward."

"Lincoln loves her," Lexa said. "People accuse us of being gross, but seriously, look at them."

Clarke laughed. "They're ten times worse," she said. "But then, they're allowed to be." Her shoulders slumped, and she put away her sketchbook and wormed her way under the covers to press close to Lexa. "When did life get so hard?" she asked.

"It's always been hard," Lexa said. "I think the question is more when did it start feeling as if it was against us?"

Clarke nodded, but they both knew the answer, so the question was largely rhetorical. Lexa couldn't help wondering if things would ever feel normal, or good, again. She wrapped her arms around Clarke protectively, and knew that no matter what happened, no matter how bad things got, she wouldn't, couldn't give up, because she finally had something worth fighting for.

* * *

"How many people are coming to this thing?" Lexa asked. It was the day before Thanksgiving and classes had officially ended the previous day. Clarke was in the living room, working on the paper that she was determined to get finished before the holiday so that she didn't have to worry about it ruining the rest of the long weekend. Anya had been in the kitchen since the afternoon before, prepping things that could be done ahead of time. Today was apparently dedicated primarily to the making of pies.

"Let's see... you, Clarke, me, Raven, Luna, you said she was bringing someone with her—"

"Derrick," Lexa supplied.

"Right, Derrick..." Anya ticked off a few names of people that Lexa didn't know. "And there's a couple more that I invited who said they weren't sure, but I think probably a dozen."

Lexa inwardly cringed. She honestly wasn't sure where they were going to fit a dozen people in this place without some serious rearranging of furniture. They certainly didn't have a table big enough to seat everyone, but could you have Thanksgiving dinner off of TV trays? That had to be against some kind of rule of etiquette.

"And you're making _how_ many pies?" she asked. 

"Listen," Anya said. "I don't tell you how to do your job, you don't tell me how to do mine." She grinned.

"What _is_ my job?" Lexa asked. 

"Figuring out how we're going to fit a dozen people in this place," Anya said, grinning. 

Lexa groaned. She'd been afraid of that. 

"Quint is bringing a table with him," Anya said, "and folding chairs. It should be big enough. You just need to figure out where we're going to put it."

"Which means I'm in the way, doesn't it?" Clarke said, looking up from her laptop.

"A little bit," Lexa said. "You can use my desk. It'll be quieter, anyway."

"I kind of find the sound to the mixer soothing," Clarke joked. "A little white noise until Anya starts swearing at it."

Anya extended her arm out the kitchen doorway to flip Clarke off. Clarke just grinned and gathered up her stuff, disappearing into Lexa's room to knock out the last few pages that she needed to write. Lexa began shoving things around until she had cleared a place large enough that she was pretty sure that it would fit a table and chairs for twelve people. They would be cramped, but it would probably be all right. If it wasn't, well... they would have to figure that out then.

The next morning they were all up early. Clarke even went running with them, and when they got back she put on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, claiming that it was a tradition and that it wouldn't feel like Thanksgiving without it. Anya was busy in the kitchen, and they helped her when asked, but mostly it seemed like the best help they could offer was to stay out of the way. 

Around noon, when the parade switched over to a dog show (which was oddly compelling for some reason...) people started to arrive. Lexa hugged Luna and said hello to Derrick, who she had met a few times, briefly, and introduced him to Clarke. She greeted the people that she didn't know, doing introductions as if she was the hostess of this thing, and Anya periodically called out hellos and declined offers of help. 

Raven arrived with grease smudged on her cheek, scowling. "I swear I'm going to sell that damn thing for parts," she growled, and Lexa didn't need to ask to know that she was referring to her (increasingly unreliable) car. "Except no one would buy it, because even its parts aren't worth anything!"

"You could have called," Clarke said, handing her a damp paper towel to which she'd added a little Dawn to scrub away the black streak. "I would have come and picked you up."

"No," Raven said. "I was not going to let that thing win."

The door buzzed again, and Lexa really wanted to just prop the door open downstairs so she didn't have to keep dealing with it. This time, though, it was Quint with the table and chairs, and behind him was Aden and his mother, who Anya had mentioned she'd invited but who were still on the maybe list. Lexa sent his mom upstairs – she was in remission but was still recovering from her treatments, and the last thing that she needed to do was exhaust herself hauling things up the stairs – and recruited Aden to help her get things moved and set up. 

"Look," Anya said, "we even have a table cloth." 

"With turkeys on it," Raven said. "Classy." She grinned, and Anya rolled her eyes. They spread it over the table, and Lexa was about to sit down, figuring there was nothing more that she had to do for a little while, when the damn door buzzed again. She buzzed the person in and opened the door, ready to remind them to take off their shoes (in case they missed the sign that they'd hung up), but she didn't need to. 

"Hi," the young woman said, flashing a bright smile at her. "I'm Niylah." She held up a box. "I come bearing gifts. Or... lending gifts." Lexa took it, looking in to find dishes and silverware. "Anya had mentioned that you didn't have enough for everyone, and she seemed disappointed at the idea of having to use plastic, so I figured I would help out. They won't match, of course, but it's better than nothing."

"Thank you," Lexa said, mostly on Anya's behalf. She hadn't been bothered by the idea of plastic plates, as long as they were a kind of plastic that could be recycled, because it meant fewer dishes to do, or fewer times that the dishwasher had to be run. But Anya would appreciate the gesture. "Come in." She went and put the box on the counter, and turned to see Niylah approaching Clarke. 

She dodged between people to get to them, not sure what to make of the look on Clarke's face. "Clarke, this is Niylah," she said. "Niylah, Clarke." 

"I know," Clarke said. "We've met."


	153. Clarke

_Well this is fucking awkward._

Clarke watched as Niylah's eyes slid from her to Lexa and back again, and then she smiled. "It's nice to see you again," she said. "I'm going to go say hello to Anya." She disappeared into what was definitely starting to feel like a crowd, now that the table was taking up so much of the room that they would otherwise have had to walk in. 

Lexa looked at her, saying nothing but her expression spoke volumes, and Clarke sighed. "It was first semester last year," she said quietly, "at a party. We... kind of made out."

Clarke saw the corner of Lexa's mouth quirk, but it was impossible to tell whether she was fighting a smile or a frown. "Should I be jealous?" she asked.

"No," Clarke said, too quickly and too loud. People glanced over at them, and she dropped her voice. "Of course not. I'd had too much to drink and I was homesick and pissed off at my mom – yes, I could do both at once – and I just..." She shrugged. 

"I was joking," Lexa said gently, but there was just the tiniest flicker of doubt in her eyes, like Clarke's protestations were making her more worried instead of less. 

And Clarke didn't know how to reassure her, because she wasn't going to say that it was nothing. It hadn't been nothing; it had been nice, and it had helped her get through that night, and those feelings, and honestly if she hadn't gotten pulled away by a text from Octavia saying that she needed to go home now, she wasn't sure what might have happened. But they hadn't even exchanged numbers, and Clarke had thought that that was it, and she would probably never see her again anyway.

Apparently the universe wasn't going to let her off the hook that easily. But it was only awkward if she let it be, right? She doubted that Niylah would make it into anything bigger than what it was, and certainly not in front of a bunch of people that she didn't know. 

"Okay," Clarke said, sliding her fingers through Lexa's and squeezing gently. Lexa squeezed back, a little tighter than Clarke had, and maybe it was a possessive gesture, but that's not what it felt like. It felt more like she'd taken Clarke's squeeze as a question: 'Are we okay?' and she was answering it, 'Of course.'

Still, she was glad when Anya announced that the food was almost ready, and everyone either got out of the way or moved to help set the table and start moving the dishes of food – more food than even this many people could possibly eat, and if Anya didn't send leftovers home with people they would probably have meals for at least the rest of the break, if not longer – to the table. 

They had just sat down when the door buzzed again. Anya looked around, her eyes flicking from one face to another like she was counting, and her face slid into a slight frown. Clearly everyone she had invited, or that had said they would or might come, was here. Which meant that whoever was at the door was uninvited, and that left Clarke feeling cold.

She got up anyway, because she was closest, and pushed the button for the buzzer, realizing only after she'd done it that she'd meant to hit the one for the intercom. "Shit," she muttered at the knock at the door a few seconds later. 

"See who it is," Anya said, but she sounded slightly wary. 

Clarke peered through the little peephole in the door, her heart clenching as she realizing that it might be a very, very long time before she stopped expecting any unexpected person at the door to be anyone other than Finn. Would that fear _ever_ go away? 

But it wasn't Finn. It was the girl from her birthday party, the bartender that lived with Lincoln. Echo. She opened the door, stepping aside to let her in. 

"Room for one more?" she asked. "I brought wine."

"Of course," Anya said, although she still looked confused. Everyone shifted around until they had made a space to put down a plate and squeeze in a chair for her. 

Echo clearly picked up on the awkwardness, and for a second Clarke thought she might decide not to stay. "Lincoln said he was going to text you," she said. "I—"

Anya went to retrieve her phone, which she'd left in the kitchen. She scrolled through and sighed. "He did," she said. "I'm sorry. I missed it."

"I'm sorry to just barge in," Echo said. "Showing up uninvited isn't usually my style."

"It's fine," Anya said. "The whole point was that this was a gathering for people who had nowhere else to go."

Echo smiled crookedly. "Yeah. He mentioned that you were having a thing, that he was sure it would be okay if I came in his place, since I was the only one who didn't have other plans for the day. I told him no, I was fine, I was going to enjoy having the house to myself. But then I was standing there looking at my frozen dinner and feeling pretty sorry for myself, so..." She shrugged. 

"I'm glad you came," Anya said. She went to the cabinet to get wine glasses for anyone who wanted some. 

"Just remember that I'm a bartender, not a sommelier," Echo said. "I mostly just chose it for the label." She winked, and people smiled, and after a few who apparently knew something about wine, or at least pretended to, tasted it, they told her that if she really had picked it by the label, then maybe one _could_ judge a book by its cover after all.

"I don't know if anyone is religious here," Anya said, "but I know that I'm not, so I'm not going to say grace, and I'm not going to make us go around and say what we're thankful for or anything cringingly sappy like that. I'm just going to say that I'm glad that you all came, and that I get to share this meal with all of you. I know that things are pretty rough out in the rest of the world right now, and a lot of times it doesn't really feel like there's a lot that we as individuals can do. But I figured that at least I could make sure that people knew that they have a place where they belong, and feed them some – okay, a lot of food and send them home maybe feeling like there's still a little bit of good in the world."

"Here here," someone chimed in, raising their glass, and they all toasted to it.

"Now dig in," Anya said. "I tried to cover pretty much all of the classics, and accommodate any vegetarians among us by making sure there are plenty of sides that you can eat even if you can't have the turkey. And no, I will not insult your palates with a Tofurkey; that shit's just wrong."

They laughed, and soon the dishes were being passed and everyone's plate filled up before everything had even made its way around. 

"And make sure to save room for dessert," Lexa said. "She made six pies."

" _Six_?" Raven asked. "That's like... half a pie each!"

"Sounds about right to me," Derrick said, grinning. "What do you think?" He nudged Aden, who was sitting next to him, and Aden smiled and ducked his head, his ears turning pink. Clarke knew that he wasn't actually shy once he got to know people, but he wasn't big on being the center of attention, either, or at least not if he wasn't the one who put himself there in the first place. 

"Oh shi—shoot," Echo said. "I hope no one is superstitious."

"Why?" Raven asked.

"Because there's thirteen of us," Echo said. "When thirteen sit down to dinner, the first to rise will die. Isn't that how it goes? The whole Last Supper thing?"

"Your name's not Judas, so I'm not worried," Raven said. "I would be more worried about Hera coming down and cursing one of us if she finds out you've been protecting her husband from her wrath."

Echo grinned. "A mythology fan, I see."

Raven shrugged. "You pick up things here and there. I assume that's where you name comes from?"

"That or my parents are just hippies who thought it sounded cool," Echo said. "Spoilers: it's the latter. But if anyone suggested that it must be from the myth, I never bothered to disagree."

"If it makes you feel any better," Clarke offered, "my parents were giant nerds and I'm named after a science fiction author and the woman who won the Nobel Prize for her research in radioactivity." 

"I'm named after a city... kind of," Lexa chimed in. Which led to a conversation about people's names and their origins, which led to more general conversation about families, and where they'd grown up and how they'd ended up here, and sometimes it got a little chaotic as different conversations vied for dominance, and people at one end of the table wanted to add in their two cents to a conversation that was being held at the other end, but it was the kind of chaos that Clarke didn't really mind much, because it wasn't as if anyone was shouting. 

Lexa, on the other hand, was starting to get tense, and Clarke reached under the table to touch her leg, squeezing gently in an effort to reassure her. It seemed that Luna had noticed, too, because she said something to Lexa in German, and Lexa replied, and even though she couldn't understand what they were saying, Clarke could see the effect that it had on Lexa, how she seemed to calm down, straightening her shoulders a little like she was re-centering herself, and Clarke flashed an appreciative smile at Luna, who just nodded slightly. 

There was a somewhat tense moment when politics came up, but thankfully before it could get too heated it got derailed by trying to explain to Luna how the Electoral College system worked... or didn't work, as the case was... and they could at least all agree that it really didn't make any sense and should probably be changed significantly or abolished completely. When they were all too full to even think about eating more, they cleared the table, with Lexa managing to successfully block Anya from the kitchen, instead putting herself in charge of getting things put into containers to be stored for later. Someone – Clarke wasn't sure who, but it must be someone who worked at a restaurant or something – had actually brought some of those take out containers with the aluminum bottoms and the plastic tops, and Lexa asked people what they wanted to take home and packed it up for them, labeling each of the tops with a Sharpie and tucking it into the fridge for them to take home later. 

"Are we going to use this for dessert?" Clarke asked, gesturing to the table. 

"I don't think so," Anya said. "If there's anyone who can't be trusted to not get crumbs all over the floor, they can sit at the regular table." Her eyes strayed to Quint, who held up his hands. 

"I can't help it!" he said. "When I was little, my parents called my Pigpen."

"You probably shouldn't have admitted that," someone said. "That's the thing about nicknames... you can never completely leave them behind."

"Can someone give me a hand?" Clarke asked, and she wasn't surprised when Niylah went to the other end of the table and helped her fold it up, then drag it out into the hall. They would have to move it back downstairs later, but for now it was at least out of the way.

Niylah stopped her with a hand on her arm before she could go back inside. "I hope my being here didn't cause any trouble for you," she said. 

"No," Clarke said. "It's fine."

"Good," Niylah said. 

"It's not... she's not like that," Clarke said. "The kind of person who gets jealous, I mean."

"I'm not sure that there's a specific kind of person who gets jealous," Niylah said. "Sometimes emotions have a way of surprising us, or having a will of their own. But I'm glad that she's not, because it's obvious that you love her."

"She—"

"It's just as obvious she loves you too," Niylah said. "I'm happy for you."

"Thank you," Clarke said. She wasn't sure what else to say. That she hoped that Niylah found someone? Who was to say that she didn't have someone already? Or that she wanted someone? Probably better to just let it go. She pushed open the door and went back inside, and caught Lexa's eye from across the room. Lexa raised her eyebrows, and Clarke did the same, and was surprised when Lexa just smiled and shook her head, like she found the whole situation funny. Maybe she did. Wasn't there a word for taken pleasure in watching someone else squirm? _Schadenfreude_? She supposed she could ask Luna, but then she would probably want to know why, and really, she was making this all into a much bigger deal in her head that it was or needed to be.

When someone suggested that they play a game, of course the first thing that came up was Cards Against Humanity... until they remembered that there was a _high school_ freshman present, and his mom, and that probably wasn't the greatest idea. 

"I mean think about it," Echo said. "It really can go one of two ways. Either he has no clue what something is, and we embarrass the shit out of him explaining it, or he _does_ know what something is, and we get him in trouble with his mom because 'How the heck do you know _that_?'"

They all laughed and agreed that maybe that would be a game better played later, when Aden had gone home for the night. Instead they decided on Pictionary, and Clarke was suddenly very popular because she could actually draw. To keep the teams even, Aden's mom offered to be the timekeeper... which actually ended up in practice meaning that she tried to help whatever team was currently losing, and sabotage whatever team was currently winning, or at least it seemed that way when she was giving them the prompts for what they were supposed to draw. 

By the time the game ended, most of them were actually able to think about food again, so Anya went and got out the pies, and Lexa hadn't been exaggerating when she said that there were six of them: pumpkin, two different kinds of apple (Dutch and regular, apparently), pecan, chocolate cream, and lemon meringue. 

Raven put herself in charge of cutting the pies, working out how to cut each of them into twelve pieces, figuring that it was safe to assume that there would be one person who wouldn't want each kind of pie, so that there could be a piece of each kind for everyone if they wanted it. 

After dessert, Aden's mom decided it was time to go home, and a few others headed out as well, but most people stuck around for more games, and it was well after midnight before the last of the guests went home, with Niylah and (surprisingly, at least to Clarke) Echo sticking around the longest, insisting on helping them clean up before they went.

When it was just four of them left (and Raven didn't spend every night there like Clarke did, but she wasn't an infrequent overnight guest, either) they flopped onto couches and into chairs, exhausted and half comatose from too much food.

"That was good," Lexa said, her voice slightly muffled because her head was on Clarke's shoulder, and she didn't seem to have the energy to lift it. 

"Yeah it was," Raven said. "But we know it would be, with Anya in the kitchen."

"You don't actually have to suck up anymore," Clarke said. "She's not grading you."

Anya snorted. "What are you saying, Clarke?" she asked. "Because you don't _have_ to eat here all the time, you know. You can always go back to the dining hall."

"You must have misheard me," Clarke said. "What I actually said was, 'Anya is awesome and so is her food.'"

Anya smirked. "Yeah, that's what I thought."


	154. Lexa

After Thanksgiving, the rest of the semester seemed to crash in on them all at once. Lexa's usual system of keeping herself organized gained several extra layers just to make sure that she stayed on top of things, and when she finally turned in her last paper the sense of relief was immense. She knew that Clarke still had one more exam to go, and of course it was the class that she was the most worried about. Lexa had tried to be optimistic about it, telling Clarke that it meant that she had more time to study, but really it just meant that she had more time to stress. Lexa hadn't seen her in two days because she'd been spending most of her time going over outlines and flash cards and attending study groups, and Lexa was honestly pretty sure that Clarke was worrying a little _too_ much about it, but Clarke had brushed aside her gentle nudges that she might need a break, and she had too much going on herself to do more than nudge.

Until now. 

Lexa quickly found the phone number she was looking for and made a call. It meant going several blocks out of her way to do a pick up, and the weather was lousy, rain that was threatening to turn into sleet, but it would be worth it. At least she hoped it would be. 

Her student ID got her in the front door of the dorms, but she got stopped in the lobby by a nerdy-looking guy whose hair was sticking up in every direction like he'd been running his fingers through it and tugging on it for hours. Given the size of the textbook spread out on the desk in front of him, it might not be the worst theory she'd ever come up with. "What do you—" he started, then stopped himself. "I mean who are you here to see?"

"Clarke Griffin," she said. "She's expecting me." She held up the bag of food, and she thought that the poor kid might actually drool when he smelled it. 

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Go on up." She'd gone two steps before he stopped her again. "Wait! I have to swipe your ID."

She handed it over, and he slid it through a little box. She assumed it was to track who went in and out, and although she wasn't sure that she was thrilled about the Big Brother aspect of that, she could understand why the school would have something like that in place. Sure, the vast majority of the students were legally adults (although Clarke hadn't been for her first month here the previous year), but most of them still had concerned parents somewhere, and for those who lived on campus, the school probably had some kind of legal responsibility to see to their safety and security. If someone went missing, they could at least get an idea of when the last time they were in their dorm was. And if guests also had to swipe in, it meant there was a way to trace who was in the building if anything happened. Like, say, if someone was being stalked...

She shook the thought from her head; that was done and over with, and hopefully that asshole was gone for good. She climbed the stairs up to Clarke's floor (she wasn't a big fan of elevators, and the ones in some of the dorms were particularly prone to breaking down) and knocked on her door.

"Use your damn card!" Clarke growled from the other side. 

"I don't think that works unless you live here," Lexa called back.

"Lexa?" The door was yanked open, and Clarke stared at her as if she didn't recognize her. Cognitive dissonance from seeing her in an environment where she didn't expect her, Lexa assumed. She wondered if there was some kind of specific technical term for that. She started to smile, but it faltered when Clarke just shook her head at her. "Now isn't a good time," she said. "You should have called, or texted, or..." She shook her head again. "It's not a good time. My exam is in three hours."

"I know," Lexa said. "When did you last eat?"

"I ate," Clarke said. 

"When did you last eat something that didn't come from a vending machine?"

"Don't," Clarke said. "I'm serious, Lexa. I don't—I can't do this right now." 

"Five minutes," Lexa said. "You can take a break for five minutes." Five minutes wasn't long enough for Clarke to actually eat something, but it might be long enough for Lexa to convince her that she needed to. And if she couldn't... she would leave the food for Clarke to eat when she was ready, and she would go.

Clarke looked at her, scowling lines between her eyebrows, but she finally nodded and let her in, shutting the door behind her. Lexa set down the bag of food and shrugged off her coat, draping it over the back of what she assumed was Octavia's desk chair. She held out her hands to Clarke, offering but not demanding. "I can't take the exam for you," she said gently, "but I can try to take some of the stress."

Clarke approached her almost warily, like she wasn't sure that this wasn't some kind of trap, but as soon as Lexa's arms folded around her she seemed to collapse, and Lexa had to shift her stance subtly to absorb the sudden shift in weight and balance. She rubbed Clarke's back in long, slow, strokes, and kissed her softly on the temple. "Good," she said. "Good." 

It didn't even take five minutes. It just took one good, long, solid hug, and Clarke was calmer, steadier, less harried. Once she was standing back on her own two feet, she seemed to register the smells emanating from the bag Lexa had brought, and her stomach growled. She smiled wryly. "I guess it's been a while," she admitted. 

They laid out a little picnic on a (not entirely clean) towel on Clarke's bed, sitting cross-legged across from each other and sharing the meal that was basically the same one that they'd had the first time they'd really gotten together on purpose, which Lexa had hoped would bring back positive memories even if the circumstances surrounding it had been less than ideal. Once Clarke had had a few bites, she really seemed to come back to herself, and she cocked her head. "You know," she said, "I don't think you've ever actually been in my dorm room before," she said.

"I haven't," Lexa said. "You always come to me."

"I wonder why," Clarke said dryly, gesturing at the narrow bed that they sat on, which wasn't particularly comfortable even with the memory foam mattress topper. Sure, they could have fit on it together if they had to... but it wouldn't have been much fun if either of them wanted to move at all.

"Next year—" Lexa started to day, then stopped herself because it didn't seem right to be talking about what was going to happen next year when things were so unsettled in the here and now. Not between them – they were as solid as they'd ever been, each other's anchors – but just in general, and there as a part of her that honestly felt like by this time next year there wouldn't be a world for them to live in. Catastrophic thinking, she was pretty sure was the technical term for it, but weren't they living in a world that was on the brink of catastrophe? But even putting that aside, it seemed a little presumptuous to assume that they would still be together next year (but why wouldn't they be?) and that Clarke would want to live with her (but why wouldn't she?) and maybe she was just afraid that if she thought too much about it, planned too far ahead, that she might somehow jinx them. But probably (hopefully) the main stumbling block was _where_ they would live; she wasn't sure Anya would be entirely thrilled to share the place with both of them full time. 

"Next year will be different," Clarke said, finishing for her in a way that didn't really say anything, and maybe she understood what Lexa had been about to say, and maybe she understood too why she couldn't say it. 

They finished eating, and Lexa packed up the leftovers to take home; they could eat them tonight or tomorrow, since she was pretty sure as soon as her last final was over, Clarke would be packing up and coming to stay with her... although they had both been so stressed out they hadn't really discussed their plans for the break. With only two hours before Clarke's exam, it probably wasn't the time to bring it up. 

"I should get back to studying," Clarke said, reaching for a pack of note cards. 

Lexa caught her hand, held it gently. "I don't think studying more now is going to make a difference," she said. "There's a point of diminishing returns, and a point after which you have to accept that if you don't know it now, you're not going to."

"Do you have a better idea?" Clarke asked. Her expression and tone were more-or-less neutral, but Lexa suspected that she was actually a little (or maybe more than a little) annoyed. 

"Take a shower," Lexa said. "Put on clean clothes. It's amazing how much better it makes you feel." She remembered the summer after Costia died, Anya had made sure that she got up and showered and put on clean clothes every single day, and at first Lexa had grumbled about it because why did it matter? But then she realized that it actually helped her to feel a little bit more normal, more human. It helped her think more clearly. She hoped that it would do the same for Clarke.

Clarke looked at her, then finally nodded. "Okay," she said. "I'll be back in a little bit." She grabbed her bathrobe from a hook in her closet and went into the bathroom. A few minutes later Lexa heard the water come on. She looked around, and even though she knew she probably shouldn't, she got up and started to clean. She tried not to move anything too far, because she didn't want Clarke (or Octavia) to have a hard time finding things later, but just like a clean body and a fresh outfit helped give her clarity, so did an organized living space, and maybe she should have done this sooner. 

She heard the water turn off, and Clarke moving around in the bathroom, but she didn't hear the door open, so she wasn't aware that Clarke was watching her until she turned in that direction and found her leaning against the door frame, looking amused and annoyed – or maybe exasperated – in equal measure. 

"I'm sorry," Lexa said. "I—"

Clarke closed the distance between them and put her arms around Lexa, kissing her not very gently, backing her up to her bed and not stopping when the backs of her knees hit it and buckled. "I have an hour and a half," she said, her lips brushing Lexa's. "Anything else you can think of that might help me relax?" 

She didn't wait for an answer, and although this wasn't what Lexa had had in mind when she'd come over, and it was honestly probably the last thing that she thought would be on Clarke's, she didn't object because maybe it _would_ help Clarke relax and stop stressing about her test. 

It turned out that sharing the bed wasn't as hard as they might have imagined, but then they were basically only occupying the space of one person with their two bodies for most of it. Lexa's fingers tangled in Clarke's damp hair as they finally settled side by side, curved into and around each other with Clarke's head pillowed on her shoulder. 

"I guess _now_ I should get dressed," Clarke said. She looked up at Lexa, her eyes sparkling with amusement. "So should you, unless you just want to stay here." 

"Wouldn't that be a little distracting?" Lexa teased. "Would you really be able to focus on your exam knowing I was here waiting for you?"

Clarke seemed to genuinely consider that for a moment, and Lexa laughed. "I'm not going to just stay here!" she said. "What if Octavia got home before you?"

"O was done yesterday. She's at Lincoln's. I don't expect I'll see her until next semester." Clarke grinned.

Lexa knew that wasn't likely to be true; it was almost certain that they would get together at some point during the break. She thought that Octavia had mentioned that she would have to go home to check on her mom, but it wasn't likely she would spend the whole break there. She tightened her arms around Clarke, planting a kiss on her forehead, then let her go. "Get dressed," she said. "Something that's comfortable but makes you feel confident."

"Yes ma'am," Clarke said, sitting up and throwing her a salute. Lexa grimaced, knowing the gesture was meant as a joke, but it bothered her anyway. Clarke leaned down and kissed her. "Sorry," she said. 

"I know," Lexa said. "It's all right." She didn't mean to be a minefield; it was just sometimes hard, if not impossible, to predict what things would trigger a reaction in her. She sat up and reached for her clothes, putting them back on while Clarke found something to wear that fit Lexa's criteria. 

When they were both dressed again, Lexa grabbed a comb from Clarke's dresser and motioned her over. "Sit," she said, gesturing to the place at her feet as she sat on the edge of the bed. Clarke looked at her curiously, but she sat, and Lexa began to work the comb through her still damp hair, which had become tangled after her shower. She worked from the ends up, careful not to tug, and she felt Clarke lean into her leg, twining her arm around it.

She remembered – vaguely, but she remembered – doing the same thing to Anya once... maybe more than once. She remembered how good it had felt to have someone do something so simple for her, how much comfort it gave her. She hoped that it did the same for Clarke. 

When the comb slid through the strands without snagging, she parted Clarke's hair and caught back one side, beginning to braid it back. 

"Are you making me pretty for my test?" Clarke asked, her tone light, almost teasing. 

"You're always pretty," Lexa said. 

Clarke tried to turn her head, but Lexa held it in place so she wouldn't mess up the braid. She heard Clarke exhale, a sound as close to what was written onomatopoeically as 'hmmph' as she'd ever heard, but she stayed still. "Once when I was little my mom had to go away to a conference, and so it was just me and my dad," she said. "I wanted my hair in braids. I insisted that it _had_ to be in braids." A soft laugh. "Turns out my dad wasn't very good at braiding. I was a complete disaster... but I was happy anyway because he'd tried."

Lexa forced herself to smile even though Clarke couldn't see it, trying to keep the lump in her throat at bay, because her father had never... Her father had never done a lot of things. Her father had never really been a father at all, and that was why she'd cut him out of her life. Which she was trying very hard not to think about as the holidays approached, because even though it had been her choice, and even though it had almost certainly been the _right_ choice, that didn't mean that it didn't hurt.

"I spent so much time in the ocean when I was little," Lexa said, "so my hair was always full of salt and sand. And it used to drive my mother crazy because no matter how securely she pulled it back, by the end of the day, it was loose and tangled and just generally a mess." She put a tie around the end of one braid and began to work on the other side, leaving Clarke's hair loose in the back, taking just enough that it wouldn't get in her eyes. "She couldn't understand it. She never yelled at me; that wasn't how she was. She said that there must be some sort of water spirit that lived in the waves that stole the ties from my hair." She was quiet for a moment, finishing the second braid, then took the first one and wove the two together, fastening it at the end. "There wasn't, of course. There was just me. I was the one who always made sure that my ponytails came loose or my braids unraveled."

Clarke turned to look at her. "Why?"

"Because then she had to spend the time washing it and combing it and putting it all back," Lexa said, shrugging. 

"So you just did it to have her attention?"

"I guess so."

Clarke put her hands on Lexa's knees and pushed herself up so she was kneeling. She took Lexa's face between her hands and held it steady, their forehead resting against each other and their noses brushing. "I love you," she whispered. "Thank you for doing this."

Lexa smiled and kissed her softly. "Good luck on your test," she said. "I'll see you after."


	155. Clarke

The end of the semester came with a huge sense of relief... and also dread. Clarke still didn't know what she was doing for the holidays, or even really what she _wanted_ to do. She could go home... probably _should_ go home, and if she asked she was sure that Lexa would go with her. But she wasn't at all sure that that was what she wanted to do, or that she wanted to subject her girlfriend to it. On Christmas it would be a year exactly since all of this started... since she ran away from home (because no matter how you looked at it, that had essentially been what she'd done) after finding out that her mother was in a relationship that she hadn't known about, with a guy Clarke had met maybe once, and pregnant with his kid. It would be a year since she'd ended up at a mostly empty frat house and gotten drunk enough that falling into bed with Finn had seemed like a good idea, triggering his obsession with her, and the scariest few weeks – was it really only a few weeks? a month, maybe – of her life. 

But it had also led to her staying with Octavia, and going out on New Year's Eve, which had led to Octavia meeting Lincoln, and to her meeting Lexa, although she hadn't realized it at the time. It had led to Lexa's intervention on her behalf when Finn had cornered her, which had led to... this. To her lying in bed beside the most beautiful girl in the world, to knowing that she had found the person that she was meant to be with... if not forever, because forever was a long time, and there were no guarantees (that was something else that had been driven home in this past year)... then for a long time. For as long as she could see into the future, anyway. For as long as she cared to imagine. 

Lexa shifted and rolled over, reaching out an arm and draping it over Clarke's stomach, her fingers tracing idly over her side. "Good morning, Clarke," she murmured, her lips brushing Clarke's bare shoulder. 

"Good morning, Lexa," she murmured back, scrunching down and turning so that she could kiss her. 

"You're awake early," Lexa observed. 

"Maybe you're awake late," Clarke teased. 

"Maybe," Lexa agreed. She brushed her nose against Clarke's. "What are you thinking?"

"Just about the holidays," Clarke said. "Wondering if this is what it's like for people when they get married."

Lexa's eyebrows crept up slightly, but she didn't say anything, just waited for Clarke to continue.

"Having to decide what they're going to do, who they're going to spend them with," Clarke clarified. Which wasn't exactly what she'd been thinking, but it was part of it, and she didn't want to start the day in a dark place, and talking about everything else might drag them both down. 

"We don't have to worry about that," Lexa said. 

Now it was Clarke who raised an eyebrow. "We don't?"

Lexa's lips pursed. "It's not as if my father is a big holiday person to begin with, even if we _were_ speaking." 

_So much for not starting the day in a dark place._

"I wasn't thinking about your father," Clarke said, trying to keep her tone light. "Is Anya going away for the holidays?"

"Oh." Lexa shook her head. "No. Things aren't—" She stopped herself, maybe realizing that it wasn't her place to say anything about what was going on between Anya and her parents. But Clarke knew, or at least knew some of it. She was here often enough, and the conversations got loud enough that even when they were kept behind closed doors, she had caught some of what was happening. Since the election, Anya had been talking to her parents about their military careers, and from what she could tell, she had been encouraging them all to consider the possibility of civilian life, because she didn't want them to find themselves in a situation where they had to defy the orders given to them and possibly face court martial, or to act on orders that were unconscionable. Both of which Anya seemed to think were not only possible, but probable under the incoming regime. Her parents didn't seem to agree, or at least not all of them. Or they were willing to take the chance rather than give up on the only career they'd ever known. So things between Anya and her parents were... strained, at the very least.

"So then we do have to decide – spend them with my mom and Marcus and Veelu, or stay with our family here. Octavia is going home for Christmas, but I'm pretty sure she's going to try to keep that to as short a stay as she can. The longer she's away from home, she says, the harder it is to go back. Not that she doesn't love her mother, but..."

"Some people are easier to love from a distance," Lexa filled in. "She's doing okay, though? Her mother?"

"She seems to be," Clarke said. "From what O has told me."

"Is Lincoln going with her?"

Clarke nodded. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure."

"Hopefully that will make things a little easier to deal with," Lexa said. "I think Raven is staying here... or at least spending the day here. She has to take care of the cat for Gina." 

"Gina's going away?" Raven hadn't mentioned anything to her, but then why would she? Now that she actually lived in the apartment and wasn't just housesitting, she probably didn't mind being there alone. 

"She's going home with Bellamy, I guess," Lexa said. "Or Bellamy's going home with her. I was eavesdropping and didn't quite catch which."

"I didn't realize it was that serious," Clarke said. "Between them, I mean."

"I guess so," Lexa said, lifting one shoulder and letting it fall. 

Clarke traced her fingers down Lexa's back, feeling the places where the skin was slightly raised by her tattoo, following the lines of it where she could. She felt Lexa shiver, and she pulled up the blankets more securely around them even though it wasn't really cold. "What do you want to do?" she asked. 

"I've never cared much about Christmas," Lexa said. "My mom didn't make a big fuss about it; we weren't religious and she didn't like how materialistic it could be, and we didn't live anywhere near any family, so they kept things pretty small. I got a few gifts and we had a nice meal, but... it was mostly just another day. After she died my father would always get the day off – that and my birthday were the two days a year, conveniently almost exactly six months apart, that we would always spend together. But it wasn't like we actually celebrated anything. I was probably one of the only kids who actually dreaded Christmas, because it wasn't like there was anything to _do_. Everything tended to be closed, and we were sick of each other before lunchtime." 

Clarke couldn't even imagine. "It was a big day for us," she said. "My dad... my dad loved holidays. All of them. Except Columbus Day, but that's a whole other thing. I guess he just liked to celebrate. I think I told you about how we would all get matching pajamas?" Lexa nodded. "And we would get up early – half the time _he_ woke _me_ up – and open up our stockings, and then we would have breakfast – cinnamon rolls and if Mom insisted that there we have some protein with our sugar, scrambled eggs – and then we would open our presents. We all took turns so that no one missed anything. My mom's side did their big celebration on Christmas Eve, so Christmas Day we would go to my grandparents on my dad's side, and there would be a big meal and more presents, and when I was a little older, after we left there we would sometimes go to the movies after, if we weren't completely exhausted by then. After he died, though..." Clarke felt Lexa pull her closer, cuddling her in their little cocoon of blankets and body heat. "The first year we tried to keep it up... but our hearts weren't in it. We were just going through the motions. And then last year..." She pressed her face into the curve of Lexa's neck. "You know what happened last year."

Lexa nodded. "Last year I decided I would fly back from Australia on Christmas Day. I thought what better way to avoid the holiday completely than to spend it in the air? Not thinking about the fact that unlike when you fly _to_ Australia and lose an entire day in the process, flying _back_ means that you actually live the same day twice." She smiled crookedly. "For most of the flight I was thinking about what I was going to do when I landed, where I was going to stay until the dorms opened, or whether I was going to stay at all. I was seriously considering just getting on another flight, going anywhere but here. But then Anya was waiting for me despite the fact that I hadn't actually given her any of my flight details and she brought me here and told me I was home."

"Are you glad you stayed?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa caught her chin and tipped it up, forcing Clarke to look her in the eye. "Do you really need to ask that?" she asked. 

"Yes," Clarke said, not because she didn't know the answer, but because she wanted – needed – to hear it. 

"Yes, Clarke," Lexa said softly, solemnly. "I'm glad I stayed."

"I'm glad you stayed too." She kissed Lexa, closing her eyes and letting herself get lost in it for a little while.

When they'd caught their breath again, Lexa asked, "What do _you_ want to do?" She pursed her lips, pretending to scowl. "And don't say me, because I gathered that already, and you know that's not what I'm asking."

Clarke laughed and nuzzled her cheek. "You know me so well," she said, and it made her feel warm inside to know that it was true. But that didn't cancel out the pit in her stomach at the actual question. "I don't know," she admitted. "I know that I should probably go home, but I'm not sure that that's what I want."

"Have you talked to your mom about it?" Lexa asked. 

"Not really," Clarke said. 

"Call her."

"Now?"

"Now." 

"It's early."

"Not that early," Lexa said. "Anyway, she has a baby. She'll be up."

"Oh, now you're an expert on babies?"

Lexa just gave her a look and pushed herself up, reaching for Clarke's phone and holding it out to her. Clarke was pretty sure that Lexa had watched her type it enough times that she could guess the code to unlock the screen, and that if she didn't make the call, Lexa would. Or she would call from her own phone, which would make things even weirder. So she brought up her contacts and tapped on her mother's name.

The phone rang only once before her mother picked up. "Hi sweetie. I was just thinking about you."

"Hi Mom."

"What's going on? Isn't it early for you to be up?"

"Technically I'm not actually up," Clarke said. "I'm still in bed." 

She thought she heard her mom laugh, or maybe snort. "Say hello to Lexa for me."

Clarke grinned, maybe a little sheepishly. "Hold on," she said. "I'll put you on speaker." She poked the button and set the phone down on the bed between them. 

"Hello," Lexa said. 

"Hi Lexa. How are you? How were finals?"

"I'm all right," Lexa said. "Better now that finals are over, but they went pretty well."

"I'm glad to hear it," Abby said. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

"We were just trying to figure out what we're doing for the holidays," Clarke said, and sort of cringed, waiting for her mother to say something about how she'd assumed that they, or at least she, would be coming home. 

"I see," Abby said. "We're not planning on anything big for Christmas, even though it's Vera's first, because she's really too young to even be aware that it's different than any other day. We'll make more of a fuss next year when she'll at least be interested in the wrapping paper and boxes. I hope you'll be able to make it here for New Year's, though."

"What's on New Year's?" Clarke asked. They'd usually just spent the day as a family, or invited over a few friends, and watched movies and ate a bunch of junk and then watched the ball drop at midnight before collapsing into bed. Her mother didn't really expect her to keep up that family tradition, did she? Now that their family had changed?

"We're having a party," Abby said. "Instead of—" She stopped, and suddenly she sounded uncertain. "Instead of having a big wedding, we're going to have a party on New Year's."

It took a minute for the words to register, and for a second Clarke felt a flash of the old anger and resentment she'd felt that her mother seemed to find it so easy to move on. She felt Lexa's fingers lace through hers and squeeze, and she let out a breath and let it go. Her dad was gone, and he wasn't coming back. Her mother deserved to be happy. She wanted her to be happy. "Oh."

"We talked about it when I found out I was pregnant, but I wasn't ready then. I didn't trust that he wasn't just doing it because he thought that that was what he had to do, that it was the _right_ thing to do. I wanted it to be something that we were both sure that we wanted." Clarke could hear her mother swallow, even though the phone. "We've talked about it off and on since, as something for the future... but with the way things are now, with so much uncertainty about pretty much every aspect of the future on such a large scale..." She stopped again, sighed. "It just seems like the path of least resistance to make sure that your sister's future is secure."

"Oh," Clarke said again. 

"I know," Abby said. "It sounds so mercenary, but it feels like our hands are being forced, a little. But if it didn't happen now, it probably would have been within the next year anyway, so..."

"I get it," Clarke said, and she did. Marcus made her mother happy. They loved each other. Whether they were married or not didn't change that one way or the other. It just made certain things simpler. "When is it?"

"We're just going to go during our lunch break one day," Abby said. "And then we'll have the party. You're welcome to invite as many friends as you'd like."

"Okay," Clarke said. She felt a little dizzy, like her world had been turned upside down and shaken, but maybe not entirely in a bad way? She was glad that Lexa was beside her, though. 

"Just try to give me an idea of how many people might show up," her mom said. "Okay?"

"Will do," Clarke said.

"And if you decide to come here for Christmas, let me know."

"Okay."

"I'm sorry to just spring this on you," Abby said. "It's all been pretty last minute." She hesitated, then asked, "Are you okay?" When Clarke didn't answer right away, she asked, "Lexa, is she okay?"

Lexa looked at her, and Clarke nodded. "She's fine," she said. "I'll take care of her."

"I know you will," Abby said. "I'll talk to you soon."

"Okay."

"I love you, Clarke."

"Love you too," Clarke said. Her finger hovered over the button to disconnect the call. "Oh, Mom?"

"Yes?"

"Congratulations." She disconnected the call and put the phone back on the nightstand, blinking as if that would help clear the dazed feeling that threatened to overwhelm her. 

" _Are_ you okay?" Lexa asked.

"Yeah," Clarke said. "I want her to be happy."

"Okay," Lexa said. She pulled Clarke close, holding her tight for a minute until the world felt less like it was spinning out of control. Lexa must have felt some change in her, because after a little while she loosened her grip and said, "So... we still haven't figured out what we're doing."

Clarke sighed. "What do _you_ want to do?" she asked. 

"You already asked me that," Lexa pointed out. 

"And you didn't answer," Clarke said. 

"Neither did you."

"Flip a coin?" Clarke asked. 

"Heads we stay here, tails we spend it with your mom?"

"Sure." Clarke rolled over and fumbled on the nightstand, knowing she'd dropped some change there the night before. She found a penny and held it up, then flipped it and caught it, slapping it on the back of her hand. "This isn't binding, is it?" she asked. "If we don't like the result?"

Lexa rolled her eyes. "If there's a result you don't like, then why don't you just say what you want to do?"

Clarke lifted her hand off of the coin. "Heads," she said.

"So we stay." Lexa cocked her head. "Is that what you wanted?"

"I think so," Clarke said. "I..." She frowned. "I miss being excited about Christmas," she said. "I miss decorating and making cookies and singing carols and... all of it. But I don't think I want to do all of that with Mom and Marcus. It wouldn't feel right, and she said they weren't making a fuss anyway. But you..." She took Lexa's hand, laced their fingers together, kissed her knuckles. "I want to start building those traditions with you. If that's what you want."

"I've never had a Christmas tree," Lexa said. 

Clarke blinked. "Never?"

"One time we tried to put Christmas lights in a palm tree," Lexa said. "That didn't work out too well."

Clarke laughed. "We'll get a tree. Even if it's just a small one."

"Isn't it wasteful to cut down a perfectly good tree just to decorate your house?" Lexa asked. 

"There are Christmas tree farms where they plant at least one tree to replace each one that they cut down," Clarke said. "It's their business." She wrinkled her nose. "There's always fake trees, I guess."

"But that's not what you want," Lexa said. "Real tree it is. From a sustainable tree farm, or whatever you'd call it."

"I guess we should probably ask Anya," Clarke said. "Make sure she's okay with it."

"Why?" Lexa asked. "It's my home too."

"There's that," Clarke said. "Still, it seems polite. And we might need to recruit her help with the cookie making."

"Fine," Lexa said. She pushed back the blankets and crawled out of bed, getting dressed in last night's discarded pajamas. When they went out into the living room, Anya was already in the kitchen. 

"Morning," she said. "I was wondering if you two were ever going to get up."

Clarke glanced at the clock. "It's eight-thirty!" she said. "That's not even close to late."

Anya grinned at her. "It is around here."

"That's because you two are weirdos. It's vacation. Take a break."

"Does that mean you want me to stop making breakfast?" Anya asked. "Because I can—"

"No," Clarke said. "Not from _that_."

"I see how it is," Anya joked. "Anyway, I could hear that you were talking, so I knew you were awake."

"We were talking about Christmas," Lexa said. "What we wanted to do."

"And?"

"We're staying here," Lexa said, not a question. "We want to get a tree. I've never had one and although she's too polite to say, I'm pretty sure that Clarke is appalled and convinced that I was raised by wolves."

"Weren't you?" Anya asked. 

"You howl at the moon _one time_..." Lexa grumbled, and Clarke wasn't sure if this was some kind of inside joke or if they were just riffing off each other, but she liked seeing it either way. She supposed that maybe somewhere down the line she might not so clearly remember the first time she and Lexa had sat beside each other at this counter, how withdrawn Lexa had been, how haunted. Maybe someday this would feel like normal, and that moment in time the outlier. But as things stood, any time she saw Lexa smiling and laughing, acting like any other person their age, it felt like a small miracle. 

"So we're getting a tree. Where exactly are you planning to put it?"

Clarke glanced at the living room, considering. "We might have to rearrange a few things," she said, "and make sure that's it's not a big one."

"We'll make it work," Lexa said. "And we need to make cookies."

"Way ahead of you there," Anya said. She held up a cookbook that had been flagged with little sticky tabs. "I was planning to give cookie plates as gifts because I have neither the mental energy nor the expendable income to do much else."

"I don't think anyone is going to complain," Clarke said. "Well, except for the ones who think you're trying to sabotage their diet or whatever."

"Those people can—" Anya stopped herself, smiled sweetly. "Share them with their friends and family, of course. 'Tis the season."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why does my Abby fail so hard at communicating with her daughter before things reach a tipping point? I swear this is a trend/theme that I did not intend!
> 
> Also... I made a rough outline of the rest of the story today. Bittersweet, but it's time.


	156. Lexa

When Lexa got to the dojang she was surprised to find that she wasn't the first one there... and even more surprised that the person on the mats wasn't one of the kids, considering that it was time for the juniors' class, not the adult class. But the person laying into the heavy bag was obviously an adult, or at least a teenager. Their back was turned, so all Lexa could see was a long black ponytail, which she didn't recognize. 

She slid off her shoes and bowed onto the mat, glancing into the office as she passed. Master Gustus looked up and motioned her to come in, so she set down her bag and stepped inside. He kept his voice low. "She was waiting on the steps when I got here," he said. "Asked if it was all right if she just worked out for a while."

"I didn't—" Lexa started, but when she looked back out into the training area, she finally got a look at the girl's face. Ontari. The girl who had helped them with the big group form for the party, obviously back from college for the winter break. 

"I didn't ask her what was wrong," Master Gustus said. "Just told her to come in. But obviously something is."

"You want me to ask?" Lexa didn't exactly relish the idea of prying into the business of a girl she barely knew, but from the sound of things, something clearly _was_ wrong. No one hit with that much power just for the fun of it... or very few people. Power was great, but control was better nine times out of ten. 

"No," Master Gustus said. "Not if you're not comfortable."

"I don't really know her," Lexa said. 

"That's fine. We'll see if anyone actually shows up for class, and we'll go from there."

Lexa nodded and went to change, and then went back out on the mats to stretch, watching as Ontari shuffled in and out from the bag that hung from the ceiling, punching and dodging back, then kicking it so that it swung and dodging again. 

Time for the juniors' class to start came and went with no one showing up, which wasn't exactly surprising given the fact that it was Christmas Eve, and finally Lexa stood up and started to work through some forms, refreshing her memory on a few of the color belt ones that she'd realized while working with some of the kids earlier in the week that she wasn't as solid on as she should be. She'd only gotten through half a form, though, when she heard Ontari mutter a curse and stop. 

"What's wrong?" she asked. 

"Nothing," Ontari said, a denial that Lexa was sure was reflexive, automatic. "I'm fine."

Lexa looked at her, saw her hand. "You're bleeding," she said. "Come here." She motioned for Ontari to follow her off the mats, and handed her a tissue to mop up the blood that was dripping between her fingers from where she'd split open (or abraded away) the skin on her knuckles while she grabbed the first aid kit. 

"This is going to sting," she said, holding Ontari's hand gently as she wiped at the skin with an alcohol prep pad. She heard the hiss of Ontari sucking in a breath, but didn't look up at her, just finished cleaning it up, glad that they'd recently restocked and actually had the special bandages that were meant for knuckles. After she'd applied it, she let Ontari's hand go. "It's usually better to use gloves with that bag," she said. "It's a little tough on the skin otherwise."

"Yeah, no shit," Ontari said, and Lexa saw her expression tighten as she realized that she shouldn't have said that, that Lexa outranked her and ought to be shown more respect as a result, especially after she'd helped patch her up, but she didn't try to take it back or apologize. 

"I'll get you a pair if you want to keep going," Lexa said. "But I was actually going to do some long stick stuff, since we've got space... if you're interested?"

"I didn't really get to do much," Ontari said. 

"Then I'll teach you," Lexa said. "Come on." She went to the corner and grabbed two sticks – one was hers and the other she was pretty sure was Anya's – and handed it to Ontari. "Form or combat?"

"Combat," Ontari said. 

"Okay. Do you remember the warm-up?"

"Vaguely." 

"On my count then, and stop me if you forget."

They worked together through the entirety of the juniors' class time, and when no one else showed up for the adult class, they worked through that, too, moving from long stick to medium stick to regular self-defense, knocking each other down and picking each other back up until they were too tired to really keep going. Lexa grabbed two bottles of water and sank down on the mat next to Ontari, handing one to her. "It's good to see you again," she said.

"Yeah." Ontari smiled, but it was obviously forced. Not that Lexa thought that she wasn't happy to see her, too. She was pretty sure that as soon as they stopped moving, whatever had brought the girl here in the first place snapped back into focus, and turned her grim. "Thanks for... all of that."

"It's always interesting having new people to work with," Lexa said. "Helps keep me from slipping into bad habits." 

"Yeah," Ontari said again. 

"Everything okay?" Lexa asked finally. "You seemed..." She gestured to the hanging bag, which she would have to check after class to make sure that there was no blood that needed to be cleaned off. 

"I've been home for a day," Ontari said. "And all I've heard—" She stopped herself. "Don't worry about it. It's not your problem."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Lexa asked. 

"Not unless—" But Ontari stopped herself again. "It's fine," she said. "I'm fine."

"I was thinking about going and grabbing something to eat," Lexa said. "I didn't eat much before class, and I wasn't actually expecting to work this hard. You want to join me?"

Ontari looked at her, and there was something wary in her gaze, like she wasn't sure whether the offer was genuine, wasn't sure whether she could trust it or if it was some kind of trick, and Lexa hated that look. She hated how different it was from the girl she'd met at the party, who had been enthusiastic and confident and ready to go. This girl looked... defeated. 

"Come on," Lexa said. "Let's go change." 

They went into the locker room, and although she tried not to look (because it was rude and awkward) she couldn't help catching a glimpse of Ontari's arms as she changed her shirt, and at the dark, fresh-looking bruises on her upper arms that looked like someone had grabbed her or pinched her way too hard for it to have been accidental. 

"What are you in the mood for?" she asked. 

"Grilled cheese and French fries," Ontari said without hesitation. 

"That's easy enough," Lexa said. She said goodbye to Master Gustus and wished him a merry Christmas, and Ontari did the same. He came out of the office, where he'd spent almost the entire time they'd been working out, leaving them to their own devices unless they came to him with a question, and hugged them both. Before letting Lexa go, he whispered, "Thank you." She just nodded. 

She headed for the parking lot, and only then realized that the only other car there was Master Gustus'. "Did you walk here?" she asked.

Ontari shrugged. "It's not far," she said.

Lexa wasn't sure she believed her, but she nodded anyway. "Hop in," she said, unlocking the car doors with her key fob and tossing her bag in the back. Ontari didn't have a gear bag, just a string bag with her uniform in it, which she tucked at her feet. They drove to the diner, which was busier than Lexa would have expected, but maybe people were fueling up for an afternoon of last minute shopping, or refueling after a morning of it. She had done her shopping early, and online, because the idea of facing stores any time after, oh, Halloween, was unpalatable. 

They ordered their food, and then sat looking at each other for a few seconds, clearly not sure how to start a conversation, or which one of them was responsible for doing so. Finally Lexa asked, "Did you show your group at school the video from the party?"

"Yeah," Ontari said, and her face seemed to come alive a little as she started talking about their reactions and what they'd been working on themselves over the course of the semester, and a competition that they'd gone to where they'd done a lot better than Ontari had expected they would. By the time their food arrived, she was back to being the girl that Lexa remembered, and talking about school and the classes that she was taking next semester carried them through until the check arrived... at which point Ontari's expression collapsed back into a frown. 

"I've got it," Lexa said, in case it was the money that she was worried about it.

"No," Ontari said. "I can pay my half." She fished her wallet out of her pocket and pulled out some bills. "I don't want to owe you anything."

"You wouldn't," Lexa said, but she took the money anyway. There was no point in getting into an argument about it. Once the bill was paid, they went back out to the car. "Can I give you a ride somewhere?" she asked.

Ontari didn't answer. She was busy looking at her phone, and Lexa saw her jaw clench and her eyes close tight for a second before she shoved it into her pocket. 

"Hey," she said. "What can I do?"

"Nothing," Ontari said. "I'll just..." She shrugged. "It's fine. Thanks for lunch." She tugged on the handle of the car door, but Lexa hadn't unlocked it. She looked at her. "My bag," she said. 

"Why don't you tell me what's going on?" Lexa asked. 

"I told you, nothing—"

"That's bullshit and we both know it," Lexa said. "Something – or someone – is bothering you, and it's bad enough that you made yourself bleed trying to deal with it, and now you're willing to just... what? Wander around outside until you find somewhere to be?" Because it had become pretty obvious that the girl was avoiding going home; if she wasn't why wouldn't she just have Lexa drive her there?

Ontari shrugged. "I was just blowing off steam," she said. "Don't you ever just want to punch things?"

"Sure," Lexa said. "But not so much that I don't even notice I've hurt myself until I'm bleeding."

"Yeah, well," Ontari said. "I guess you're just better than me. Not that that's hard."

"That's not what I meant," Lexa said. "I didn't mean for it to come across that way."

Ontari sighed. "I know. It's not you. Not really. I just... I get sick of being told all of the ways that I'm a failure, all of the reasons that I'm not good enough and I never will be." She pulled back her fist, and it was only Lexa's quick reflexes that kept her from punching the side of her car. She used it to pull Ontari around to face her, and she saw that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "I've been home for one fucking day, and already I'm sick of it."

"Come home with me," Lexa said, before she could really think about it. "We're making cookies, decorating the tree. You can get away from it for a while."

"I can't—"

"You can," Lexa said. "I'm inviting you." It might not be exactly what Clarke had in mind when she talked about building holiday traditions together, but she couldn't actually see her getting upset about it, either. After all, she'd gone to Octavia's in the aftermath of her own holiday disaster. If anyone could understand needing to get away from your parents around the holidays, it ought to be Clarke.

Ontari looked at her for a long time, and then finally she nodded. "Okay. For a little while."

Lexa pushed the button to unlock the doors, and drove home. She kept glancing at Ontari out of the corner of her eye, trying to get a read on her, and she noticed faint scars on her face, like someone had actually cut her, and it had healed imperfectly. She didn't ask, though, because she didn't think it would make anything better for the girl to talk about it. And the explanation could be completely mundane, like a car accident or something. (When had the idea of a car accident become mundane?)

Or maybe it wasn't. But she was trying to give the girl a break, a few calm hours, before she got sent back into the storm. She parked and got out, waiting for Ontari to follow before unlocking the door. "Shoes off," she said when they got to top of the stairs, and then let her in. 

Christmas carols were playing at a volume slightly louder than Lexa might have preferred, but given the racket of the mixer and Raven swearing as she tried to untangle a wad of Christmas lights, maybe it was necessary. Clarke looked up from the box of ornaments that she had retrieved from her mom a few days before and her forehead furrowed. "Hey," she said, and grabbed the remote to turn down the volume. 

"Hey," Lexa said. "Ontari needs a little holiday cheer, so I invited her over." She tried to tell Clarke with her eyes what she couldn't say out loud, and Clarke nodded like she understood... or at least accepted. 

Anya looked over her shoulder. "I could use another set of hands in the kitchen," she said. "If you're interested."

"Sure," Ontari said. She crossed the room and accepted the apron that Anya handed her. She washed her hands, and soon was elbow-deep in flour and other ingredients, and seemed happy enough with it that Lexa just let her be. 

"Another misfit toy?" Raven asked, leaning over and dropping her voice so that Ontari couldn't overhear. Lexa nodded. "Cool." She went back to swearing at the lights.

"It's okay?" Lexa asked Clarke, sitting down next to her and pulling an ornament from the box. 

"Of course," Clarke said. "What's a holiday around here without an extra orphan or two?" She smiled, and Lexa leaned in and kissed her. 

Hours later they all sat down to dinner, eating from plates in their laps because the table, and counter, and basically every other flat surface in the kitchen area was covered in cooling cookies. Anya admitted that she might have gone a little bit overboard, but she didn't really think anyone was going to complain. Ontari looked at her phone, and then threw it across the room, where thankfully it didn't hit anything hard enough to break it. 

"What's wrong?" Clarke asked. 

"My mother," Ontari said. "I wasn't paying attention to my phone, and because I didn't answer her texts, she said that she decided that I obviously didn't care about spending the holidays with family, so I could just stay wherever I was and not to bother coming home, because I wouldn't be allowed in."

"Don't you have a key?" Clarke asked. 

"No," Ontari said. "She changed the locks while I was gone. She hasn't given me the new key."

"What kind of—" Clarke started, but stopped at Raven's quick shake of her head. 

"You can stay here," Anya said. 

"No," Ontari said. "There's no knowing when – or if – she'll decide to let me back in. I'm not going to do that to you."

"Is there anywhere else you can go?" Lexa asked. "You're not—" But she had no right to say what Ontari was or wasn't going to do. She was in college, and therefore an adult old enough to make her own decisions. Lexa had no right to take away her agency in her own life. "I would rather not let you go not knowing if you actually have somewhere to stay."

Ontari shrugged. "It's such bullshit. She's not even really my mother. Biologically. But I've lived with her for so long I barely remember my actual parents, and most of the time it's fine but then every once in a while, she makes sure to remind me about how she took me in when my parents couldn't take care of me, like I had a say in the matter, like I should be thanking her, like I owe her something. _She_ was the one who made that choice. If she didn't want me..." She scowled.

"What about friends?" Raven asked. 

"I'm not exactly Miss Popularity," Ontari said. 

"Aunts? Uncles? Cousins?" Anya tried.

"Maybe," Ontari said. "I guess she's kind of a cousin, in that kid of your parent's friend kind of way. She lived with us for a while when things were ugly at home. But I don't know if she would want me. Or even if she still lives around here."

"Do you have her number?"

"If she hasn't changed it. Which I would have if I were her. She didn't leave on the best terms."

"Do you want to try?"

"I guess." Ontari got up and retrieved her phone, and ducked into the bathroom to make the phone call. When she came back she looked both overwhelmed and relieved. "She's going to come get me," she said. "I hope it's okay that I told her where—."

"It's fine," Lexa said. 

"We'll send you both home with lots of cookies," Anya said. 

The buzzer rang about twenty minutes later, and Lexa got up to answer. "Who is it?" she asked.

"Echo."

Lexa frowned, but buzzed her in anyway, and opened the door as she heard her come up the stairs. "Hey," she said. "What brings you here?"

Echo smiled crookedly. "I heard you picked up a stray that's looking for a good home. I was hoping you were taking applications." 

It took Lexa a second to realize what Echo was talking about. "You know Ontari?"

"Since she was a tiny little rugrat following me around everywhere," Echo said, her smile widening a little, reaching her eyes. "I think this is one of those small world moments. When I talked to her earlier I was too busy being pissed off at Nia to ask her who she was staying with, and the address didn't even register until I was halfway here."

"Come in," Lexa said, stepping aside. 

Ontari stood up from where she was sitting on the ottoman, looking uncertain. "You don't have to—"

"Come here," Echo said, and tugged her into a hug. They held on to each other for a long time before Echo finally let her go. "I'm just glad you found yourself some good people to spend the day with," she said. "Hey everyone."

"You know them?" Ontari asked. 

"Not well, but yeah," Echo said. "Friends of a friend. I spent Thanksgiving here."

"Oh." 

"You want to help decorate the tree?" Clarke asked. "Raven already did the lights so you missed the swearing, but we haven't done the ornaments yet."

Echo looked at Ontari. "Up to you, kiddo," she said. 

If looks could kill, Echo would be dead, but she just grinned at Ontari, obviously unapologetic. Ontari shrugged. "If you want the help..."

"The more the merrier," Clarke said. 

Even with six of them, it took over an hour before they had it decorated to Clarke's standards. (Apparently certain ornaments needed to go certain places... there were Griffin family rules about these things that needed to be followed even when the tree belonged to someone other than the Griffin family.) Lexa steadied Clarke as she stood on a chair to reach the top of the tree to put on a cardboard and glitter star, and then wrapped her arms around her when she stepped down. 

"It's perfect," Clarke declared. 

"I guess we should get going," Echo said. 

"Wait!" Lexa went and grabbed her camera. She'd taken some pictures during the day, but she wanted to make sure that she had a good one of this, for whenever they started a photo album of their own. She found her tripod and set it up, then set the timer on the camera to allow her to get into the group shot before the flash went off. She took a few more for good measure, and then they all hugged Echo and Ontari goodbye, sending them off with several dozen of the promised cookies.

"Are we supposed to leave cookies out for Santa?" Lexa asked. 

Clarke stuck her tongue out. "I'm not _actually_ five," she said. "I know that Santa isn't real."

"What?!" Raven flopped back on the couch, clutching her chest. "Nooooo!"

Anya threw a pillow at her. "You're ridiculous."

"But you love it," Raven countered, tossing it back.

"So you keep telling me."

"Because it's true."

Lexa took Clarke's hand, tugging her down the hall, away from the argument that was threatening to get physical, and not in a violent way. She shut her door behind them, and pulled Clarke close, kissing her. "Merry Christmas?"

"Not yet," Clarke said, nudging her back toward the bed. "But it will be."


	157. Clarke

Clarke peered at herself in the mirror, trying to figure out if she'd gone overboard on her makeup for the evening. This wasn't exactly a black tie affair... but it was as close to a wedding reception as her mother was going to get, and however mixed her emotions might be about Marcus and her mother starting a new family of which she was only tangentially a part, she wanted to make sure that it was as perfect as it could be. Her mother deserved no less. 

"You look beautiful," Lexa said from the doorway. 

"You have to say that," Clarke said, smiling at her through the mirror. 

"Do I?"

"Yes," Clarke said, turning to face her and pushing herself up on her toes to kiss her... then stopping before she actually did because she didn't want to smear either of their lipstick. "Because you love me."

"I do," Lexa said, "but I also don't say things that I don't mean, as I have reminded you at least a thousand times by now. Therefore, you look beautiful. Therefore, we need to go or we're going to be late."

"It's only downstairs," Clarke said. Her mother had gotten a block of rooms at the hotel where they'd rented one of the ballrooms for the party, and although most of the out-of-town visitors were paying their own way, she had refused to take any money from any of Clarke's friends. Which was incredibly kind (and probably incredibly expensive) on her part, but maybe not as expensive as a whole wedding would be? She had no idea, and she didn't ask. She guessed that was one of the privileges of _having_ money; you didn't need to talk about it.

"Yes," Lexa said, "and it's at seven. It's ten of now."

"Oh shit." Clarke switched off the bathroom light and went to find her shoes, slipping them on and grabbing the little clutch she'd brought to keep their room key and her phone in. She followed Lexa out the door, and they went down to the room where the party was being held. They met up with Octavia and Lincoln and Raven and Anya and Bellamy and Gina at the door, and there were air kisses and bro hugs, and Clarke realized then that her friends all cleaned up really nicely. 

When the doors opened they went inside, and Clarke wasn't sure who had been responsible for the decorations, but she loved it. Everything was dark blue and silver, with lots of twinkle lights and stars... and a glittering disco ball over the dance floor. She couldn't help laughing when she saw it. "Remember that prom you thought you avoided?" she asked Anya.

Anya snorted. "Hey, at least I have a better date than I would have back then." She slid her arm around Raven's shoulders, and Raven hip-checked her in response, grinning. 

There wasn't assigned seats, but they all made their way to the same table anyway, since Clarke was basically the only person who knew anyone in the room who wasn't part of the group... and even then there were quite a few people here that she didn't know. Colleagues of her mother and Marcus, she assumed. She saw Jackson, and he waved at her. She would have to say hi later, ask how he was enjoying the house. 

Once everyone had more or less settled into seats, Marcus stood up and thanked them all for coming and sharing this evening with them, to celebrate the beginning of a new year, and a new life, and... Clarke kind of tuned out after the first couple of sentences, instead focusing on her mother's face as she stood by his side and smiled. They raised their glasses in a toast, and then they were free to do what they wanted. Most people headed for the bar or the buffet. She and her mother had agreed that as long as they didn't make a spectacle of themselves so that the hotel staff noticed, if someone over the age of 21 slipped the underage partygoers a drink (there wasn't anyone there under 18) she would pretend that she didn't notice. So they all ended up with drinks, and after they'd had some food to help soak up the alcohol, people started to get up and move around, with a few dancing sort of half-heartedly under the disco ball.

Clarke was starting to feel a little bit antsy, not knowing whether she ought to be introducing her friends to people or what, when her mother went over to the DJ and took the microphone. "And now we're going to turn up the volume a little," she said, "because I have it on good authority that dance parties aren't quiet."

And the opening notes of 'Shut Up and Dance' came through the speakers, and Clarke looked at Lexa and burst into laughter before dragging her onto the dance floor, with her friends following close behind, and soon more people were up and moving, and it really started to feel like a party. They danced for several songs in a row, until Clarke was flushed and breathless and in desperate need of a drink, so she leaned in to Lexa so that her lips practically brushed her ear. "I'm going to get us some water," she said. 

Lexa nodded, and Clarke made her way off the floor and back toward the bar. She got two bottles of water, cracking one open immediately and taking a long sip. On her way back to her friends, she got stopped by a hand on her arm. "I know I'm old, but I didn't know I was invisible!"

Clarke looked down at the woman in the chair. "Grammy Lou!" How had she missed that she was here? Had her mother told her she was going to be here? Her grandmother stood up and hugged her tight, and Clarke let herself be pulled into the chair next to her. "I'm sorry I didn't see you," she said. "And that I don't call much, and –"

"You don't need to be sorry," her grandmother said. "You've got your own life now, and your own friends." She motioned toward where they were still dancing. "I was happy that your mother invited me. Most people would probably think it would be too awkward." 

"Is it?" Clarke asked.

"No," she said. "Jake is gone, and he's not coming back. She deserves to be happy." Clarke nodded. Her grandmother leaned in conspiratorially. "What about you?" she asked. "Do you have a special someone?"

Clarke bit the inside of her lip and nodded. 

"Is he here?" Grammy Lou asked. "Which one is he?"

" _She's_ there," Clarke said, pointing, "in the black and silver." 

"Ah. You're absolutely right. That was very heteronormative of me, and I apologize. What's her name?"

Clarke was sure that her eyes almost popped out of her head when she heard the word 'heteronormative' coming out of her grandmother's mouth, but she managed to collect herself enough to say, "Lexa. Do you want to meet her?"

"Of course I want to meet her!" She rolled her eyes like it was the most ridiculous question that she'd ever heard. 

Almost as if she had some kind of sixth sense that told her when people were talking about her, Lexa glanced over then, clearly searching for Clarke, so she waved her over. As she made her way toward them, Clarke felt her grandmother squeeze her arm. "Oh, she's a looker, isn't she?" 

Clarke just shook her head, not because she disagreed but because sometimes her grandmother was just too much. She held out a hand to Lexa as she came the last few feet toward them, and was glad when she took it. "Lexa, this is my Grammy Lou. My dad's mom, who Veelu is named after. Grammy Lou, this is my girlfriend Lexa."

"Nice to meet you," Lexa said, letting go of Clarke's hand to take her grandmother's instead, sort of half-shaking, half-squeezing it. 

"The pleasure is entirely mine," Grammy Lou said. "Come on, sit down, tell me about yourself." She looked at Clarke. "We don't need you to supervise," she said. "We'll be fine on our own. Just leave one of those waters with us. She looks parched."

Clarke shot Lexa a look, silently asking if she would be okay, and Lexa nodded. So Clarke handed her the bottle of water and leaned in to kiss her cheek, whispering, "If you need a rescue, just wave."

Lexa rolled her eyes in response. Clearly she thought that she had faced worse inquisitions than what she was likely to get from this little old lady.

Clearly she underestimated Grammy Lou.

But she left her anyway, going back to the others, who had retreated to their table for the time being. It didn't take long for people to come find her, mostly family friends who she hadn't seen in a while, who wanted to know how school was going. She introduced them around, and it didn't take long for her friends to strike up conversations of their own as they found people who they had things in common with. Raven soon gathered a cluster of engineers who had probably started as friends of Clarke's dad, but who had stuck with her mom after his death, and seemed to be having a great time talking shop. 

Finally Lexa came back, dropping heavily into the chair next to Clarke and reaching for her drink. "You could have warned me," she said, finding Clarke's hand under the table and squeezing it.

"I did!" Clarke protested, squeezing back. 

"I know." Lexa's lips curved into a smile, and the corners of her eyes crinkled a little, and this time Clarke didn't care about their lipstick; she kissed her anyway. Not for long enough to have anyone telling them to get a room, but it wasn't just a brush of lips, either. 

"What did she say?"

"A lady doesn't tell," Lexa teased, then more softly, "Later."

Clarke frowned slightly, wondering what her grandmother could possibly have said that Lexa couldn't tell her now, but she trusted her, and if she said later, then it would wait. 

"You know what I just realized?" Lincoln asked. "This is actually the anniversary of when we all met. Or I guess when one group met the other group."

"Huh," Anya said. "I hadn't thought about that."

"One year since you all saved me from—" Octavia cut herself off when Bellamy looked at her sharply. "—my own stupidity," she finished, "thinking I could drink and walk in high heels on an uneven brick sidewalk."

So she'd never told him what really happened that night, and neither, apparently, had Finn. Which was maybe surprising, or maybe not. After that night, Finn had apparently had other things on his agenda... like stalking her. Clarke was glad that she still had hold of Lexa's hand as a shiver went through her. 

"Why do I feel like there's something you're not telling me, O?" Bellamy said. 

"What you don't know can't hurt you," Octavia replied.

"I'm not worried about it hurting me," Bellamy said. "I'm worried about _you_."

"Well don't," Octavia said. "It was a year ago, and I'm fine, and look what we got out of it." She leaned in to Lincoln, and gestured at the rest of the group. "The sprained ankle was totally worth it." 

Bellamy was still looking at her like he didn't believe her, and like he wanted to pursue it, but Octavia shut him down when a song she recognized came on and she dragged Lincoln off to dance again. Clarke looked at Lexa, who nodded and followed her onto the dance floor. When it transitioned into a slower song, she slid her arms around Lexa's neck and felt Lexa's hands slip to her waist, one pressing the small of her back, the other just above it. 

"Is it later yet?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa smiled crookedly. "She just asked me a lot of questions about me: what I'm in school for, how we met – I glossed over the details on that one – and how long we've been together, what's my family like..." She shrugged slightly. "I told her that you're my family. That you're the best thing that's happened to me in a long time." 

"What did she say to that?" Clarke asked, drawing Lexa in so that their foreheads pressed together and the rest of the world disappeared around them. 

"She said that her son would be happy for us," Lexa answered, her voice soft. "She said that she could see that we were happy together, and that all your father ever wanted was for you to be happy, and that wherever he is now, he's smiling."

"Oh." Clarke blinked back the tears that rose to her eyes, and she understood then why Lexa had wanted to wait for later. She pressed her face into the side of Lexa's neck, and when the song was over, made a quick trip to the bathroom to blot her eyes and make sure that her makeup was still intact. 

The rest of the night passed quickly, and before they knew it it was closing in on midnight. Flutes of champagne were handed out, and when the countdown reached one, everyone shouted, "Happy New Year!" and drank and kissed the ones they wanted to kiss. Clarke could taste the champagne on Lexa's lips, and suddenly she didn't want to be here anymore. She wanted to be in their room, starting the New Year as she meant to continue it. 

But it took a while to get out of the party, because she had to find her mom and Marcus and congratulate them again, and then she had to say goodnight to all of the people she hadn't seen in years. Grammy Lou was one of the last, and she pulled her into a tight hug. "Maybe you'll be next," she said. "There wasn't a bouquet to throw, but... I have a good feeling about that girl of yours."

Clarke felt heat rising in her cheeks. "I think it might be a little early to—"

Her grandmother shook her head. "When a thing is right, you know it," she said. "You just know it. And there's no too early, only too late. Not that you should rush into things, but if it feels right, you hold on to it. You hold on with both hands and you don't let go, and you put in the work to make sure that it keeps feeling right. You understand?"

Clarke nodded. "I will," she said. "She will too."

"Good," Grammy Lou said. "She loves you. A blind man could see it."

"I love her too."

"I know." She held on to Clarke for a moment longer. "When something is worth having, you fight for it," she said. "Don't forget that."

"I won't," Clarke said. Her grandmother finally let her go, and she found Lexa again. 

"Ready?"

"Yes." They said good night to their friends and headed upstairs. 

As soon as they were in their room, Clarke kicked off her heels and toppled over onto the bed, holding out her arms to Lexa. But Lexa shook her head. "I'm not wrinkling this dress," she said. "Can you get the zipper?"

Clarke sat back up and reached up to slide down Lexa's zipper. She pressed a kiss to her tattoo as it was revealed, and felt Lexa shivered. "She asked about that, too," Lexa said, stepping out of her dress. "The one on my arm." She reached for a t-shirt to pull on, but Clarke caught her hand and pulled her toward the bed instead, and this time Lexa let herself be pulled.

"What did you tell her?" Clarke asked, planting kisses along Lexa's collarbone and throat. 

"That it had been a friend's idea but then she chickened out."

"Just a friend?"

"I didn't want to get into all of it," Lexa said. "You're overdressed."

"You can fix that," Clarke said. 

"I plan to." Her fingers – those long, deft fingers that Clarke loved, along with all of the other pieces of her – worked open the fastenings on her dress, and it was discarded on the floor a moment later, followed quickly by everything underneath it, and everything that Lexa was still wearing, until it was just the two of them with nothing between them but air... and then not even that. 

"She told me not to let you go," Lexa whispered as she traced Clarke's curves like she wanted to commit them to memory. "That it wouldn't always be easy, but that it was worth the work..."

"It was," Clarke said. "It is. It will be." She kissed Lexa's trembling lips, kissed the ghosts from her eyes and stroked the scars that she couldn't see, and felt Lexa go soft beneath her, breathing out and letting go, choosing to let go, to give up and give in and give herself to Clarke, and the fact that it _was_ a choice, for both of them, really, a choice that they made over and over again, to be with each other, to be each other's...

The rest of the world dropped away as she looked down into Lexa's eyes, and Lexa lifted her head from the pillow to meet her lips, to kiss her, pulling her down on top of her until they were so close they weren't quite two separate people anymore, and even though they knew each other well now, knew exactly where and how to touch, somehow still it felt like they were learning each other all over again, in the light and then again in the dark, and they slept and woke and made love again as the sun was only just starting to think about rising, and it was a new day, and a new year, and Clarke didn't know what tomorrow would bring, but today... right here, right now... was good.


	158. Lexa

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Anya asked. "I know crowds aren't your favorite thing."

Lexa shook her head. "So that somewhere down the line when someone asks me where I was when history happened on my doorstep, I have to tell them that I was in my living room watching it on TV? No way." 

Assuming, of course, that there was _was_ a point down the line where someone asked that. Assuming that there was a future at all, and some days that didn't feel all that likely, and she was pretty sure that that feeling wasn't going to go away any time soon. She had let herself hope that somehow there would be a recount that would swing the election in favor of Clinton, who had won the popular vote by millions and yet somehow had still lost. When that hadn't panned out, she'd placed her hope on the Electoral College doing what they had been created to do – keep the country from being thrown into turmoil by a stupid-ass decision. They could have done it. They should have done it. But they didn't. 

The system had failed her. Had failed all of them. Now all they had left was each other... and she had to believe that that would be - _could_ be – enough.

"This isn't about me," she said. "This is bigger than me. Bigger than all of us. I'm not hiding."

"Okay," Anya said. "I'm packing snacks."

Lexa laughed, or made a sound that was sort of like a laugh. "Of course you are," she said. "When in doubt, make food."

"We're going to need them," Anya said. 

"I know."

"Where's Clarke?" Anya asked. "I would have thought—"

"She's coming," Lexa said. "She and Octavia stopped for supplies for making signs."

Anya nodded. "There's not going to be a marker or piece of poster board left anywhere in the city," she said.

"Good." Lexa didn't plan to carry a sign; she wanted to have her hands free. "That reminds me..." She went to her room and checked on her camera, making sure she had extra SD cards and batteries ready. It would be easier, probably, to just use the camera on her phone, but she wanted to be able to have a little more control over the quality of the image. Because if something historic was about to happen, and she genuinely believed that it was, then she was going to make damn sure that it was well documented.

Clarke let herself in with the key that she'd long since been given, Octavia and Raven in tow. She came over and sat next to Lexa, kissing her. "My mom's going to meet us in the morning," she said. 

"She's not—" Lexa started, but Clarke quickly shook her head.

"No, she's not bringing Veelu. She said she thought about it for a minute, but then decided that it would be more of a hassle than it would be worth for Vera to be able to say that she was part of the Women's March when she was eight months old, since she wouldn't even remember it. So she's staying with Marcus for the day."

"It _would_ make an awesome story, though," Octavia said. 

"Yeah, it would," Clarke agreed. 

"My mom would hate that I'm going," Raven said. "But then she bought into all of that misogynist bullshit." She shook her head. "Like my sign?" She unrolled a laminated sheet that she'd clearly gotten printed somewhere – or maybe had access to a machine at school that could print something that big for her. It was Rosie the Riveter... because of course it was. 

"Did you see Anya's?" Lexa asked. 

"Oh yeah!" Raven grinned. 

"I didn't!" Octavia said. 

"It's leaned up against the wall by the door," Anya said. "You can look."

Octavia turned it around and laughed. It was a graphic of Princess Leia with the words 'A Woman's Place Is In The Resistance'. "That's so you," she said. 

"Yup."

"What about you?" Octavia asked, looking at Lexa. 

Lexa shook her head. "No sign, but..." She went and retrieved the jacket she planned to wear. Pinned to the back was an image she'd found online and gotten printed. It was of a girl with a sword, and it said, 'I am not afraid. I was born to do this. – Joan of Arc'.

"Oh, _nice_ ," Octavia said. "I like it."

Lexa nodded. "She was my first crush."

Clarke looked at her sideways. "Your first crush was Joan of Arc?"

"Didn't I tell you that?" Lexa asked. "I swear I told you that."

"You told me you were obsessed with her," Clarke said. "You didn't call it a crush."

"Easy, Griffin," Raven teased. "If I didn't know better, I would think you were jealous of someone who was burned at the stake a couple of centuries ago."

Clarke just rolled her eyes. "Do we know who else is coming?"

"Other than a couple of hundred thousand strangers, probably?" Anya asked. 

"Yes, other than that."

"Gina is coming," Raven said. "Which I assume means Bellamy will too, since they're joined at the hip."

"Or that general vicinity..." Anya chimed in.

"Watch it," Octavia said. "That's my brother you're talking about, and I did not enjoy my dinner enough to want to relive it." She grinned. "Lincoln's coming, obviously."

"Luna is," Lexa said. "She's meeting up with us tomorrow." She'd been (more than) a little worried when her friend went home to Germany for the holidays that she might decide not to come back, so she'd been glad when she'd gotten a text from her asking for a ride back from the airport a few days before classes started.

"We should just put something out there on social media or whatever," Anya said. "Meet in our parking lot – please carpool due to limited space – and we can all go together. Saves people we know who aren't as close from having to try to find parking."

"Go for it," Lexa said. 

"Already on it," Octavia said, tapping away at her phone's screen. 

"Awesome."

"What time did you tell them to meet us?" Lexa asked. "I think officially the march starts at ten, but—"

"Eight," Octavia said. "I figured we would want to get there early, and if I said eight even the stragglers would be here by eight-thirty and we would have plenty of time."

"This may be the first time ever that Octavia has voluntarily done anything that early in the morning," Clarke joked, and Octavia tossed a (thankfully capped) marker at her. 

"Some of us just aren't morning people," Octavia said. "The only reason you've started to become one is because your girlfriend texts you at ungodly o'clock every morning... or she did."

Clarke smirked. "Best alarm clock I ever had," she said, leaning her shoulder into Lexa's. Lexa pressed back, not quite smiling. She knew that she should be happy, excited about what they were going to do tomorrow, but she couldn't quite muster it, because mostly she was thinking about the fact that they shouldn't have to... that women should have been flooding the city yesterday for the inauguration, not today for the first mass protest following it. They should have been rallying in joy, in solidarity because look how far they'd come, not because they all needed to stand together to face down the threat to everything they held dear.

"Do either of you ever sleep in your dorm room anymore?" Raven asked. 

"Not really," Octavia admitted. "The whole mandatory for your first two years thing is a stupid rule."

"Most people probably don't have a problem with it," Anya said. "I lived in the dorms all four years of undergrad."

"But that should have been your _choice_ ," Octavia said. "I can see for the first year, maybe, because some of the students aren't even legally adults at the beginning of the year, but past that? Make it optional. Now we're both wasting money on room and board that we're not using, and it's pointless."

"I don't disagree with you," Anya said. "Hence why I fought to get Lexa an exemption when she came back from Australia."

"You did that?" Raven asked. 

"She did basically everything," Lexa said. "I wasn't really in any kind of shape to be making major decisions for myself. I didn't know I was moving in with her until she picked me up from the airport."

"Huh," Raven said, a sound that didn't really say anything, and Lexa couldn't read her expression, but she didn't have the emotional energy to invest into trying to figure out whether she was bothered by it, and if she was, why, so she just let it go, figuring Raven would either say something, or she and Anya would sort it out between them. 

"We should probably all try to get to sleep early," Anya said. "We're going to need it for tomorrow."

"I feel like the likelihood of me sleeping at all is slim to none," Octavia said, and Lexa couldn't help agreeing with her. But she dutifully got up and got ready for bed anyway, Clarke following her and locking the door behind them. 

They settled into bed, limbs tangled together, sharing one pillow so that their faces were so close together Lexa could smell the mint on Clarke's breath. "Do you think..." Clarke started, then stopped. 

"What?" Lexa asked.

"Do you think it's going to be worth it? Do you think it's going to make any difference?"

"I don't know," Lexa said. She felt as if she'd said those words more often in the past six weeks than in the entire rest of her life combined, and she hated that feeling. She hated not knowing what the future was going to bring. Not that it was ever possible to know, really, but this uncertainty was on a much bigger scale than she'd ever faced, even when relocating to a country she'd never been to and where she didn't speak the language. 

But then that's what this felt like, more than anything, wasn't it? Because this wasn't her America. 

"I love you," she said, the other three words that she'd said more often in the past six weeks than ever before, because it was the only thing that she _was_ certain of. 

"I love you too," Clarke replied, and even though they were supposed to be sleeping, they made sure on no uncertain terms that they both knew how much they meant it.

* * *

Morning came early, as they knew it would. Lincoln showed up first, early enough that he got included in the breakfast that Anya made to ensure that they were all fueled for the day, because who knew when they would next get a chance for a meal? (Not that she didn't have plenty of snacks for them to get them through the day. Who was it who had said that an army marches on its stomach? Lexa was sure that Anya would know, but she didn't ask because she wasn't feeling up to a history lecture this early in the morning.)

After they'd eaten, Lexa cleaned up the dishes while the others made sure that everything that they thought they would need for the day was ready and waiting by the door. Anya was still cooking, making scrambled eggs and bacon and wrapping it up in tortillas, then wrapping the breakfast burritos in foil. "In case anyone didn't eat," she said, when Lexa looked over at her.

"You don't have to take care of everyone," Lexa said. "That's not—"

"I do, though," Anya said. "I do. Because it's something that I _can_ do, and it keeps me from feeling like everything is spiraling out of control."

"Okay," Lexa said, immediately backing down because she got it. "Did you eat? Because you won't be able to take care of everyone else if you don't take care of yourself, too."

"I ate," Anya said, holding up her right hand with the middle three fingers extended. "Scout's honor."

"Were you actually a girl scout?" Lexa asked. 

"For a minute." Anya grinned. "I promise I ate. Now let me finish this up so we can get out there."

Lexa put the last of the dishes in the dishwasher and went to check on everyone else. Within a few minutes, they were headed out the door, with signs and bags and Lexa's camera slung across her body on a strap so it couldn't get lost. 

Lexa almost stopped dead when she opened the door and saw the number of people in the parking lot waiting for them. There were people she didn't even recognize that she assumed were friends of Octavia's that had seen her social media post, and then there were ones that she hadn't even imagined she would see. Like Master Gustus, wife at his side, wearing a neon pink shirt emblazoned with the words 'Fight Like A Girl' with the school name in much smaller letters at the bottom.

"Is it okay for me to wear this?" he asked when she got closer. "If not, I can—"

"Why wouldn't it be okay?" Lexa asked. 

"Because I'm not a woman," he said.

"So what? You're just acknowledging the power that women have, and I don't see anything wrong with that."

"You better sell those at the school, though," Octavia said. "Because I want one."

"Pretty sure we all do," Anya said. 

"Well you're in luck," he said, reaching into his bag. "They're all big, because I figured you would want to be able to wear them over jackets today, but I will definitely get smaller sizes." This led to a quick wardrobe adjustment, as she had to unpin Joan from the back of her jacket and pin it to the back of the shirt instead. 

"Can I get one?" someone asked, and Lexa turned to see Tris standing there. She looked around to see if Tris' mother was there, but then realized that she'd never actually seen the girl's mother, or a parent of any kind. She lived close to the dojang and walked there... and although she didn't dig deep into the student records, she suspected that Master Gustus was letting slide some pretty significantly late tuition fees for her.

"Of course," he said, handing a shirt to her. 

"Where's Anya?" Tris asked. 

"Over there," Lexa said, pointing to where Anya was handing out the foil packets to those who wanted them. "Go quick if you're hungry." She wasn't sure if she should be asking Tris if she had an adult with her or not, but given the fact that they couldn't actually keep Tris from going to the march by herself, it was better that she was with them, where they could keep an eye on her. 

She saw Gina and Bellamy off to one side, and Gina was handing out what appeared to be hats in various shades of pink. She saw Lincoln take one and put it on his head, modeling it for everyone. It was made sort of square in shape, so that when it was on the corners stuck up like cat ears.

"Pussy hats," Gina explained when she got closer, grinning at her. "I'm not even sure who came up with the idea, but apparently there has been a pink yarn shortage all over the country as people have been making them to show solidarity. Want one?"

"Sure," Lexa said, "and that's awesome."

"Knitting has helped me deal with the stress," Gina said with a shrug. "It was something I could _do_."

Lexa nodded. "I guess we're all having to find ways to cope," she said. 

"I'm hoping that we'll be able to do a little more than just cope," Gina said. 

"Me too," Lexa said, even as she wondered what good hope was if it didn't lead to action? What good was marching if it didn't lead to change? Although this time they weren't even really marching for change, were they? The first goal was just to prevent a major backslide so they didn't have to claw their way back out of the pit, scale the walls they'd thought they'd torn down already... whatever metaphor you wanted to use.

And she wondered if she really had the right to wear Saint Joan on her back, with that quote. Because she _was_ afraid. She was fucking _terrified_.

But wasn't there a quote about that? Something about how courage was being scared and doing it anyway. 

Well here she was. Here they were. Scared to death, and doing it anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First... I wasn't at this march. I apologize in advance for any details that I got wrong. 
> 
> Second, for anyone who hasn't seen it, [this is Anya's poster](http://writingcities.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Leia-Resistance.jpeg). And [this is what Lexa has on the back of her jacket](https://www.zazzle.com/i_am_not_afraid_joan_of_arc_postcard-239725760528049207).


	159. Clarke

Clarke was starting to get worried when she finally saw her mother's car pull into the parking lot. She went to meet her, falling into her arms and hugging her tightly. "I'm sorry I'm late," Abby said. "Traffic is pretty crazy."

"It's okay," Clarke said. "We were just starting to get ourselves together to start moving." 

Abby looked over at the people that had gathered and her eyebrows went up. "That's quite a group you've got assembled," she said. 

"Octavia posted it on Facebook," Clarke said. "We figured it made sense to give people a central place to gather rather than trying to find each other in a crowd of thousands. I guess more people saw it than we expected, or people told their friends or something." 

"Well, there's safety in numbers," Abby said. 

Clarke frowned. "Do you really think it won't be safe?" she asked. 

Abby seemed to consider for a second, then shook her head. "No, I think it will be fine," she said. "As long as people keep things peaceful, I don't think there's likely to be any significant opposition." Clarke suspected that she might be saying it in part because she hoped that doing so would make it true, but she was willing to put a little bit of faith in the power of positive thinking... not that it had done them a lot of good lately. 

"Oh good," she heard someone say. "We didn't miss them." She turned and saw Ontari, who waved at her. Echo was following behind her, her hands wrapped tightly around a cup of coffee, her expression grim. 

"It is way too early for this," she grumbled. 

"I told you you didn't have to come," Ontari said. "I'm an adult. I don't need a babysitter."

"Your mother—" Echo started, but Ontari caught her off.

"She's _not_ my mother, and fuck her anyway. After everything she's done, you're still loyal?"

Echo looked for a second like she was going to say something, but then it registered that they weren't alone. She shook her head and didn't say anything more. Clarke got the feeling that this was a fight that they'd had before, probably more than once. She wasn't sure if Echo actually felt some kind of responsibility to keep an eye on Ontari, who was after all an adult and capable of making own decisions, or if she wanted to be here for herself, too, and just didn't have enough caffeine in her system yet to show any kind of enthusiasm for anything. 

She saw her wince as a sharp whistle pierced the air, and everyone went quiet and turned their attention toward where the sound had come from. She was surprised when she saw Lexa standing on... she wasn't sure what... so that her head and shoulders was above everyone else. "If anyone has anything that they've decided they don't want to carry with them all day," she said, her voice carrying through the still morning air, "give it to Anya now. We'll put it inside and you can get it later. Just don't leave anything that you are going to need tonight, in case you decide to leave before we do and can't get it back until tomorrow."

There was some shuffling and murmuring, and Clarke saw Anya make a quick trip back into the building. When she came back out, Lexa looked at everyone again. "We don't have to stay together," she said, "but look out for each other. We need to have each other's backs, not just today but for the next four years. Be safe out there, but also be bold, and don't let anyone tell you that what you have to say isn't important or valid. This is only the beginning." She stepped down from whatever she'd been standing on and began to move toward the street. 

Clarke fell into step beside her. She considered saying something about Lexa's little impromptu motivational speech, but she didn't want to make it sound like she was belittling it. She wasn't. Just like she'd been glad to hear Lexa talking about how she was now even more committed to becoming a lawyer because there were going to be so many battles to be fought in the courts in the years to come, she was glad now to hear her trying to psych everyone up. It meant she wasn't giving up, that she wasn't going to let the bastards get her down. 

There would be moments when it felt impossible, days so dark they were forced to wonder if they were actually in a tunnel and they just couldn't see the light yet or if they'd stumbled into a cave, but they had to keep fighting, and Clarke didn't even want to think about doing that without Lexa at her side. They lifted each other up. They always had, and they always would.

So she just smiled at her, and Lexa smiled back, and they turned onto the sidewalk and toward the Capitol. 

It didn't take long before their forward progress was slowed to a crawl as the sidewalks filled with people, and soon they were part of a sea of pink hats and signs and loud voices, some chanting but at this point people were mostly just talking, making friends with complete strangers because what else were you going to do when you found yourself standing next to the same person for five minutes to walk less than a block? There were people of all ages, from babies and toddlers in strollers up to women older than her grandmother who were being pushed in wheelchairs (and wasn't it interesting how, if you had the privilege of living a long life, you eventually came full circle like that?) The crowd was mostly women, but there were definitely men mixed in as well, and it seemed as if there must be people of every color and ethnicity in the crowd. She certainly heard a lot more languages than just English being spoken, and it was humbling to realize just how much she didn't know about the diversity of the people in the city, and country, that she called home. 

She made it a point to try to talk to people that she might otherwise have just passed on the street, because today they all had at least one thing in common. She complimented signs and asked questions about some of them when she didn't understand what cause they were championing that day, and she tried to take it all in. She was careful to always keep Lexa in sight, a little surprised at how at ease she seemed to be even when surrounded by this many people, but then she had her camera in her hand and maybe that made it easier. Clarke could hear her asking people if it was all right if she took their picture, and she didn't think she heard a single person say no. 

After a while they found a little spot out of the main press of the crowd so that Lexa could switch out the memory card on her camera. Clarke put her body between Lexa and the flow of people, shielding her so that she wouldn't get jostled and drop the impossibly tiny disk. 

"If I'd been thinking, I would have made some kind of contact card," Lexa said. "One of those 'get 250 free business cards, just pay shipping and handling' deals or whatever."

"Why?" Clarke asked. 

"Because I'm taking all of these pictures, and people are asking if I'll send them a copy, and it would have made my life so much easier if I had a card with my email address on it. Then I could just write down what number the picture is – and I guess which disk number, now – on the card and tell them to email me about it."

"I guess that _would_ have made sense," Clarke said. "Hindsight is 20/20 and all that."

"Next time," Lexa said, with a slight grimace, because they knew that there would be a next time... and a time after that, and a time after that. 

They found their way back to their group of friends, which was managing to stay mostly together, although Clarke wasn't sure how much longer that was likely to last. Niylah waved at her, having apparently joined the group at some point without Clarke noticing, and then Aden come over, grinning and waving. "My mom let me come with her," he said. "She wanted to come but wasn't sure about whether she should bring me, but then Octavia posted about people meeting up, so she decided I could come. We missed meeting up with you but I'm glad we found you."

"I'm glad you found us too," Lexa said. "Tris is here. I think she's with Anya." 

"Cool," Aden said. They'd become friends after the amusement park trip, and Lexa said it wasn't uncommon to see them conspiring together in the corner as they warmed up before class. Clarke was glad that he was making friends that were actually his own age, because as much as they cared about him, they couldn't be there for him all the time, and they couldn't always understand what he was going through. It wasn't that long ago that they'd been in high school, but it was long enough that sometimes the things that seemed to be such a big deal to him just made them want to roll their eyes. 

Clarke honestly wasn't sure when the actual march began, because they barely moved faster than a crawl the entire time. Eventually, though, they found themselves in a big open area (or it would be open if it wasn't full of people) with a stage at one and, and they staked out a place to be their group's home base while they listened to the various speakers at the rally. Anya unpacked some snacks, and people came and went as they pleased. She and Lexa sat for a while, but eventually got up to stretch their legs and wander around a bit. 

At one point she heard humming, and when she turned she saw a group of young women in pink hats holding up signs that said #icantkeepquiet, and she caught Lexa's arm to stop her walking as they began to sing. It took a moment for her to really process what was happening and focus on the words, and when she did she found tears filling her eyes. She glanced over at Lexa and saw that she had her phone out and was recording the impromptu performance. When it was over, the woman in the center of the group announced that this group of people had never met before today, that they'd been practicing this over the internet, and Clarke looked again at Lexa, grinning. "Like your form!" she said.

Lexa nodded. "I'll have to show this to Ontari," she said, indicating the video on her phone. They took a moment to congratulate the group on what they'd accomplished before moving on. They wound their way through the crowd, but stopped again when Lexa saw a group of people handing out signs for the ACLU. "Do you mind?" she asked.

"No," Clarke said, following her as she went to go talk to them. She watched the crowd while Lexa talked, and when they finally walked away, Lexa had several business cards. 

"If I volunteer now, I'll have an in when I'm looking for an internship this summer," Lexa said. 

"Good thinking," Clarke said, and it was. Any connections that Lexa could make would only benefit her in the future. There was less of an opportunity for that for her here, but you never knew what might come up in conversation with people.

The day stretched on, and eventually all of the standing and walking started to settle into her body along with the cold, and her thoughts drifted towards how nice it would be to be home, curled up with a blanket and some hot chocolate. But she didn't say anything to Lexa, not yet, because she didn't want to pull her away from something that was obviously feeding her energy when she'd been so drained lately. Finally, though, the rally ended and the crowds started to disperse, and they made their way back to the gathering place to make sure that everything had been cleaned up. Some of their group had already left, but quite a few were still around, and they made their (still slow) way back to the parking lot where they'd all met that morning. 

"Are you headed home?" Clarke asked her mom, hugging her again. 

Abby glanced at her phone to check the time. "I should soon, but I'd really like to get something to eat first. Lunch was a long time ago." 

Clarke doubted that Anya would be in the mood to cook, and it would be unfair to ask her anyway. Especially since somewhere during the day, one of her mothers, Nat, had shown up. She was in her full uniform, and yes, there was a chance that that could come back to bite her, but apparently she'd decided she didn't care. She wanted it known that even members of the military didn't agree with what was happening. 

"We could go out," she said. "Although I have to imagine that every restaurant in the area is completely packed."

"You're probably right," Abby said. "I'd still like to take our chances. Unless you don't want to."

"I don't mind waiting a little," Clarke said. "Did you want it to be just us, or...?"

"You're welcome to invite your friends along," Abby said. 

They ended up back at the Chinese place where they'd gone when Wells had visited, with an even larger group than they'd had last time. Large enough that it wasn't really possible for them to all sit together, so they were given tables nearby, and there was a lot of people shifting from one table to another while they waited for their food to arrive. 

Conversation mostly centered around the day – what they'd seen and done and people they'd talked to, the speeches they'd heard – but there was also some conversation about the future and what it might bring. For once the conversation actually seemed to have a mostly positive spin, talking about things that they could do, action they could take, rather than just all of the ways that they were doomed. Even Lexa was smiling, really smiling for what seemed like the first time in several months. Clarke squeezed her hand under the table, and Lexa squeezed back, and she wondered how long they would be able to hold on to the energy of this moment.

After dinner, she watched as her mother hugged all of her friends before finally getting to her. They held on to each other for a long time before letting go... but even then her mom's hands lingered, cupping her face. "If you need anything, you know where to find me," she said. "Even if you just need to rant at someone so it doesn't feel so much like you're shouting into the void."

"Thanks," Clarke said, then, "Thank you for coming. It... means a lot."

"You're welcome," Abby said. "It means a lot to me to be able to share this with you, too."

After one final hug, her mom got into her car, and after saying their goodbyes to everyone else (with hugs that lasted longer than they might have otherwise) she and Lexa climbed into Anya's back seat to head home. Once their shoes and coats were off, exhaustion crashed in, and they all retreated to bed.

Clarke changed into pajamas and crawled into bed, twining around Lexa as soon as she joined her, pressing kisses to her neck and jaw and lips that didn't lead to anything more than that because they were too tired, their limbs too heavy, but it was all right. They were warm and safe and together, and that was enough for now. 

"I want this," Lexa murmured against Clarke's hair. "Every day."

"What?" Clarke asked, forcing her eyes back open. 

"To fall asleep with you. To wake up with you. This." Lexa's arms tightened around her.

"I don't even remember the last time I slept in my dorm room," Clarke said, which was true. The end of last semester, she supposed, when she'd lost her mind a little during finals.

"I know," Lexa said. "But when you don't have to anymore..."

Clarke pushed herself up slightly so that she could look Lexa in the eyes without going cross-eyed. "Say it," she said. "Ask."

"I want you to—I want us to live together," Lexa said, and flicker of uncertainty in her eyes all of a sudden. "When you don't have to live in the dorms anymore, I want us to live together."

"Here?" Clarke asked. "Or...?"

"I don't know," Lexa said, and the uncertainty grew. "It will be strange, not living with Anya, but... it might be nice to have a place that's just ours."

"It might," Clarke agreed. She settled back down at Lexa's said, nuzzling her shoulder. "Tell me what our place will be like."

Lexa considered a minute, then Clarke's head was jostled as she shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "I just know that you're in it with me. Everything else is just details. It's just a box—"

"To hold memories," Clarke finished for her. "Okay." She tipped Lexa's face toward her to kiss her. "We'll start looking tomorrow."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I wasn't there, so all errors are mine.
> 
> And for anyone who hasn't seen it, [this is the group/song they saw performed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZD05-ZvQFs).


	160. Lexa

Lexa looked at the boxes of stuff stacked up along the wall of her room and swallowed hard, then got up and left because she couldn't stand to actually look at her life all neatly packed up once again. She went out into the main area, where Anya was in the kitchen as usual, humming to herself as she made a sandwich. She turned her head to look at Lexa and her smile faltered. She set down the knife she was holding to face her fully. "What's wrong?"

Lexa just shook her head. She didn't have the words to explain, and even if she did, she wouldn't have been able to force them out past the lump in her throat. 

Anya frowned. "I'll make you some tea," she said. "Or would you rather have cocoa?"

And that was all it took. The dam broke and tears filled Lexa's eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Anya was around the counter in an instant, pulling her into a hug and holding her tight. "Come on," she said, leading her over to the couch. "Shhh, it's all right." She settled them both down, and Lexa wrapped her arms around Anya's waist, her head resting on her chest, and she didn't try to stop the flow of tears because she knew that it would be futile.

Anya stroked her hair and rubbed her back, and handed her tissues to mop her eyes and blow her nose when the torrent of emotion finally subsided. Lexa didn't move from where she was, drained now, and she felt Anya press a kiss to the top of her head. "I know," she said. "It's going to be weird for me, too."

Lexa lifted her head to look up at her, and Anya smiled as she tucked back a strand of Lexa's hair that had come loose and plastered itself to her cheek. "What?" she asked. "You think that I won't miss you? It's been a year and a half, almost, of seeing you practically every single day. We run together every morning, and eat at least one meal together. You think I'm not going to miss hearing you sing in the shower, or never having to worry about whether or not the dishwasher has been run and emptied because you always do it? You think it's not going to be strange for me to not wonder when you're getting home, to not have you here to complain to about the crap students write in their papers—" She stopped. "I guess I won't have that to complain about anymore, anyway," she said more softly. "Wow."

"Yeah." Lexa swallowed and sat up a little. "Everything is changing."

"Change isn't always bad," Anya said. "You can't tell me that you don't sometimes wish for a little more privacy, or a little more space."

She was right; Lexa couldn't say that. There were definitely times where it felt like three – or more and more often four – was a crowd in the condo. It wasn't a small place, really, but it probably hadn't been intended to be the primary living space for two couples with schedules that had them constantly coming and going. But that didn't mean that she felt ready to not live here anymore, either.

She'd meant it when she'd told Clarke that she wanted to live with her, that she wanted to wake up together and go to sleep together, to have a place and space of their own to build a life in. And just as Clarke had promised, they'd started looking the next day at potential places to live, although they hadn't really taken the search too seriously until near the end of the semester, because there was no point in finding a place when they weren't going to be able to move in until the end of the semester anyway.

Once they'd really started looking, though, they'd discovered that finding something that was both livable and affordable wasn't going to be as easy as they'd thought. They'd gotten used to the condo, which was definitely an upgrade from the housing that most students found off campus, and although there were some things that they were willing to compromise on, they didn't want to move into a place where they were going to be cramped and miserable. 

There had also been – not arguments, exactly, but rather heated discussions – between Clarke and her mother about whether they ought to get a one bedroom place or a two bedroom. Clarke had argued that there was no reason for them to pay for a second bedroom that they weren't going to use, but her mother had pointed out that even if they didn't use it on a regular basis, it might be nice to have an extra room in case they had friends that needed a place to crash for the night, or if Wells visited again, and when it wasn't actually being used as a bedroom, they could use it as an office, because there would certainly be times when one of them might need to be doing homework with the other just wanted to relax on the couch and watch television. Clarke had had to concede that there was some logic to that, and they'd expanded their search... and their budget.

Finally, though, they'd been in the right place at the right time, and they'd found an apartment that they felt like they could not only live with, but actually enjoy living in. From the moment they'd walked in, Clarke had started talking about where they could put things, and how they would decorate, and Lexa started imagining making breakfast together and curling up on the couch in the evening to talk about their days. It had felt like home.

But so did this place. When Anya had first brought her here, she had been sure that it would only be for a little while before she got fed up and left, or Anya got fed up and kicked her out. When that hadn't happened, she'd started to actually settle in and let herself get comfortable. Then she'd met Clarke, and Clarke had started to spend half, and then more than half, and then all of her free time here, and somewhere along the line this house had become home. 

It was the first place that had felt like that since she'd been taken from Hawaii when she was eight years old. 

"I don't know if I'm ready," Lexa admitted. 

"You're not," Anya said. "No one ever is. Even when you feel like you are... you're not." She smiled. "When I graduated, I was so ready to be out of the dorms. I was ready to get my own place and start my own life. I was sure of it. Then life intervened, and I spent the summer with you, and do you think I felt like I had any idea what I was doing then? Here you were, _needing_ me to be an adult, to figure things out and make things okay at least on some level, and what the hell did I know about that? I was sure, every day, that I was going to do something wrong, to make everything worse instead of better. When I sent you off to Australia... I really didn't know if I was ever going to hear from you or see you again."

Anya looked at her, and Lexa looked back, holding her gaze because she got the feeling that Anya needed to say all of this maybe even more than she needed to hear it. "When I moved in here, I was lonely as hell, and suddenly responsible for everything, and I didn't know what to do with myself. I probably called my parents more in the first few weeks that I was living here than I had in the entire year leading up to it. I felt like I was playing adult, like I was faking it, and at some point someone would figure out that I was a complete fraud and send me packing back home or something. And then I went and picked you up from the airport, brought you home... and that feeling got even worse, because now I had to be an adult for both of us, and there was no one to fall back on."

"I'm sorry," Lexa said. "I never should have—"

"Don't be sorry," Anya said. "Because here's the thing, Lexa. I did it. I figured it out, and once you'd managed to pick up your pieces, you stepped up and you did it too. We made this place our home. We became a family. But that family is bigger than just the two of us now, and we've hit the point where it's time to start making new homes for ourselves. That doesn't mean we're not family anymore. Hell, you're only moving a few blocks away. We can still meet up and run together in the morning. And it's not like I won't still cook more food than two people can eat; you and Clarke have a standing invitation to dinner, as long as you give me a heads up first." 

Lexa nodded. "It's just... scary. What if when we're on our own, we realize..." But she couldn't make herself say it. She didn't even really want to think it. 

"You won't," Anya said. "You've been together for over a year... and you've been through hell with each other from the very beginning. If you can make it through what you've already been through as strong as you are... a little disagreement about the best way to load the dishwasher or whether the toilet paper goes under or over is not going to break you. Trust yourself, or if you can't do that, trust _me_. Trust everyone who has ever seen the two of you together: you're going to make it. If you want to make it, you're going to make it. I don't know if I believe in soulmates and all of that, but if there's any truth to it at all... she's it, Lexa. She's the one. And don't you dare start crying again."

Lexa sniffled and blinked, reaching for another tissue and dabbing at her eyes. "Thank you," she said. "And... we'll probably take you up on that dinner offer. Also... laundry."

Anya laughed. "Why pay to do it when you can bring it here for free?" she said. 

"Exactly." 

Anya pulled her in for another hug, and Lexa leaned into it, closing her eyes and just letting the moment sink in, because there might not be another one like it for a long time... or maybe not ever. She let the warmth of Anya's arms around her shore up the cracks in her... not walls. Not anymore. Clarke had taken them down, and she'd never really built them back up in the same way that they had been. Sometimes she wondered if she would regret that, but most of the time, she was okay with it. Letting the world in meant more opportunities to be hurt by it, maybe, but it also meant that she was more likely to see the light in it, too. So not walls. Foundation, maybe. 

Anya finally let her go. "How about that cocoa?" she asked. 

"Okay," Lexa said. "But this time I'll make it for you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is confused, this takes place in May of Clarke's sophomore year (which is really both of their sophomore year, with Lexa's timeline getting messed up switching majors), about 5 months after the last chapter. We're going to start to see some bigger jumps in time between chapters; I'll try to make a note if it's something really drastic.


	161. Clarke

"It's ridiculous for me to be nervous, right?" Clarke asked as she stuffed the last of her belongings into a big plastic bin. "I've basically been living with her all year anyway."

"Yes," Octavia said. "For the tenth time, it _is_ ridiculous." 

Clarke rolled her eyes. There was no way that she had actually asked the question ten times, or said anything that would imply it. Three, maybe four, tops. "So you're not even a little bit worried about moving in with Lincoln?" she asked.

Octavia looked at her like she was an idiot, and maybe she deserved it. "Why would I be?"

"Because it's different," Clarke said. "When you were staying with him before, you could always come here if you needed to. Now you won't be able to do that."

Octavia smirked. "If I decide I need to get away from him, I'll just come sleep in _your_ spare room," she said. "Seriously, though. Why are you even worried about this? Do you honestly think that you're going to want to get away from Lexa?"

"No," Clarke said. "It's not like we're going to be spending every minute together. We're still going to have jobs and classes and homework and I'll have my art and she'll have Tae Kwon Do."

"Exactly," Octavia said. "So basically the only thing that's going to change is that when you go home at the end of the day, it will just be her waiting for you, instead of her and Anya and most of the time Raven. And you'll have to cook for yourself occasionally." She grinned. "Good luck with that."

"And you're _not_ going to have to?" Clarke asked. 

"Nope." Octavia's grin widened. "One of Lincoln's housemates is actually in culinary school. He likes to test out recipes on them."

"Good to know," Clarke said. 

"You're not invited," Octavia replied, but Clarke knew she wasn't serious, or at least not entirely serious. 

"I would say it's going to be weird not living with you anymore, but we've barely been together in this room all year." Clarke paused, looked around at the walls that were now blank, the place as impersonal as it had been the day they'd moved in. "I was so worried when I first came to school that I was going to end up hating my roommate."

Octavia snorted. "You think _you_ were worried? I walked in to a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Little Miss Girl Next Door. You looked like all of the girls in high school who looked down their noses at me, thought that they were better than me because they had money and I didn't. I was _convinced_ that I was going to hate you."

"I'm glad you gave me a chance," Clarke said. 

"Me too." Octavia boosted herself up onto her bed and let her legs swing. "But only because Bellamy told me that I had to, because I wasn't allowed to move into the frat house with him." 

Clarke laughed. "I'll have to thank him next time I see him."

"Good luck with that," Octavia said. "When he's not at work, he's with Gina. They're so gross. I wouldn't be surprised if he proposes to her soon."

"You think?"

Octavia shrugged. "Maybe. Maybe not. He probably wants to do the whole big shiny rock, get down on one knee thing, and I don't know if he's got enough saved for that, so... I guess maybe it might not happen right away. But they _are_ moving in together."

"They already live together," Clarke said. 

"They're moving in together, just to two of them," Octavia said. "Apparently living with Raven was cramping their style or something."

"As if Raven was ever there," Clarke said. 

"True," Octavia said. "I guess it all worked out pretty well for everyone." 

"I guess so," Clarke said. With her and Lexa getting their own place, it left an empty room with Anya, which she had immediately offered to Raven. Clarke wasn't sure how often Raven would sleep in her room, but she knew that her friend was excited about having space to set up her drafting table and maybe even a little table to work on some of her smaller projects. Not that she wouldn't have plenty of room to work on things at her new job, which she'd been offered on the spot at her first interview, and would be starting two weeks after graduation. (She'd insisted on having time off between the two to actually enjoy a little bit of a break, and they hadn't argued with her. Apparently being a genius had its advantages.) She sat back on her bed, leaning back against the wall. "It's strange how much has changed in so short a time."

"It doesn't feel like that short a time," Octavia said. 

Clarke considered that. "I guess not. It's like... days and weeks have sometimes felt endless, but it's been almost two years since we started college, and it just seems like it should feel longer than it has. I mean, after the first few weeks, I was imagining living with you in the dorms for the full four years, having this typical college experience – if such a thing exists – and now here we are on our last night in the dorms, getting ready to move in with the people we're in love with, that we plan to spend the rest of our lives with..."

"I think you're overthinking this," Octavia said. "Which is what you do, so no surprise there. Why can't you just let go and enjoy it? Just let things happen without questioning them or second-guessing them or trying to force things into a shape that you're more comfortable with?"

"Sorry," Clarke said. Maybe it was easy for Octavia to just roll with things, to accept that nothing in life was certain, and that you should just be happy when things are good and worry about when things might not be so good if – when – they came up. Maybe it was a skill she'd learned growing in a household that had a seemingly infinite capacity for chaos. And maybe it wasn't a bad thing.

"Will it make you feel better if we spend one last night as roomies?" Octavia asked. "Eating pizza and watching movies and painting each other's nails, or whatever it is they do in the movies?"

"It might," Clarke admitted. If nothing else, it might make it easier to deal with the fact that a chapter of her life was coming to an end, and tomorrow she would start writing a new one, and there was no way to know how it was going to go or where it would lead. There were no guarantees of 'happily ever after'. But on the flip side, there was also no guarantees that there wouldn't be, and worrying about what tomorrow would bring wasn't going to stop whatever it was from coming. 

"I'll order the pizza," Octavia said. "You text Lexa and tell her that you're mine tonight."

* * *

In hindsight, staying up until nearly dawn probably hadn't been the best idea. Neither had partaking in the alcohol that one of the guys down the hall had offered them, because he needed to get rid of it before his parents showed up the next morning to help him move out. When her phone chimed with her good morning text from Lexa, she groaned and buried her face in her pillow. She lifted it a minute later to type back:

**CLARKE:** Good morning, Lexa. Although I'm not too sure about the good part yet.

She realized only after hitting send that Lexa might interpret that to mean that she wasn't sure that the fact that today was the day that they moved into their new place was a good thing, which wasn't what she meant at all. She was starting to type an explanation when a message popped up.

**LEXA:** I'm downstairs with coffee. Does that help?

It was almost enough to bring tears to her eyes. "God I love you," she muttered, then remembered that Lexa was not actually next to her and couldn't hear her, and typed it instead, then: 

**CLARKE:** I'll be right down.

She shoved her feet into shoes, not bothering to put on anything other than her pajamas, and went down to retrieve Lexa from the lobby. She kissed her perhaps more passionately than the guy sitting behind the desk was prepared for at this hour of the morning, then accepted the offered coffee and gratefully took a sip. 

"I know you usually like hot coffee in the morning, but it's already roughly a thousand degrees with 210% humidity so I thought iced might be acceptable," Lexa said.

"It's perfect," Clarke said. "I don't have to wait for it to cool before drinking it."

"That too," Lexa said as she followed Clarke up the stairs. 

When they got back to the room, Octavia was up. She'd gotten dressed, and was now simultaneously trying to brush her teeth and pull back her hair, which seemed like a recipe for disaster to Clarke, but who was she to judge people's multitasking choices?

"Sit," Lexa commanded, and Octavia obediently sat, trying not to drool toothpaste foam on herself as Lexa wrangled her hair into a ponytail. "Now go spit."

Octavia mumbled something around her toothbrush that sounded like it might have been, 'Yes Mom' or maybe, 'I'm not five', but she went into the bathroom and Clarke heard the sink come on. She came out a minute later. "Thanks," she said. "Shouldn't you be moving your own stuff?"

"There's not that much to move," Lexa said. "All of my furniture is staying where it is, since it's not actually mine."

"There's my dad's chair," Clarke said. 

"Which requires a bigger vehicle than Anya or I have, so it has to wait until we have use of Lincoln's truck, which isn't until after you two are moved out. Thusly and therefore..." Lexa grinned. "Should we start getting things moved down to the lobby?"

"Might as well," Octavia said. "He's on his way."

They started carting boxes and bags and bins down, and it didn't really take that long. Quite a bit of Clarke's stuff was at Lexa's by this point, and Octavia wasn't big on accumulating stuff in general. By the time Lincoln got there, they'd not only gotten everything down to the lobby, but all the way out to the sidewalk, so it was quick enough to get Octavia's stuff into Lincoln's truck, and Clarke's stuff into her car, and then they went in separate directions.

Clarke went to the apartment, getting it unlocked and the windows opened to air out (the landlord had made sure that everything had been thoroughly cleaned and even put up a fresh coat of paint, and the fumes were still lingering). She didn't unpack her stuff just yet because they hadn't completely decided how they were going to set up their bedroom. Her mother had insisted on paying for a bedroom set for them, which was being delivered later today. She'd tried to talk her out of it, saying that they could get their own furniture, but she'd refused to listen. Her mom had a point that getting a secondhand mattress was probably not a great idea, and that any furniture they got now was less that they had to get later, and they could furnish the spare room with whatever they were able to scrounge from other sources. Clarke had finally given in.

It was another hour before Lexa arrived, having gone home to wait for Lincoln to come with his truck. They quickly got her stuff into the house, and then it took all four of them to wrestle her father's chair up the stairs and into the apartment. It was the only piece of living room furniture they had at the moment, so they didn't worry too much about the placement of it. They were still working on finding a couch that, if it didn't actually go with the chair, at least didn't clash horribly with it. They needed to keep reminding themselves that there were always slipcovers. 

"Thanks," Clarke said when the truck was unloaded. "I really appreciate it"

"Is there anything else you need help with before we go?" Lincoln asked.

"Not right now," Clarke said. "We might need to borrow you and the truck at some point in the future to pick up other things."

"Any time," Lincoln said, and Clarke knew that he meant it. She was pretty sure that there wasn't much that Lincoln wouldn't do for his friends, and she was so glad that Octavia had met him, even if it hadn't been under the best of circumstances. She couldn't imagine anyone else who would ever be as good to, and for, her best friend as he was.

After Octavia and Lincoln left, they barely had time to start thinking about unpacking before a truck arrived, and several sturdy-looking men (and one woman) got out and opened up the back. "That must be the bedroom stuff," she said. 

Her phone buzzed and she answered it, and yes, this was the delivery for them, so she went downstairs to let them in, and soon they had everything moved upstairs and placed at least near where they thought they would probably want it (near enough that they could manage to make any necessary adjustments themselves), and were on their way again. 

Clarke looked around, trying to figure out where to start. It was hard to decide where to put things when they didn't have a lot of furniture, because any decisions that they made would likely end up being changed. Lexa also seemed to be at a loss. 

"We could—" Clarke started to say, but she was interrupted by her phone buzzing again. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and saw her mother's name on the screen, so she answered it. "Hey Mom," she said.

"Hi sweetie! Happy moving day!" 

"Thanks," Clarke said. She looked over at Lexa, who was standing in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the empty cupboards like she couldn't quite figure them out.

"Look out your window," Abby said. 

"Why?" Clarke asked. 

"Just do it."

Clarke went to the front window and looked out... and saw her mother waving up at her. She didn't remember inviting her mother – she was actually sure she hadn't – but her mother wasn't the type to just wait around when there was something that she wanted to do, or felt like she should. "I'll be right down," she said. 

"Did the delivery people forget something?" Lexa asked. 

"No," Clarke said. "It's my mom."

Lexa frowned. "What's she doing here?"

"Your guess is as good as mine," Clarke said. "Want to come down with me to find out?"

Lexa nodded and followed Clarke down the stairs. When they got there, they saw that there was a U-Haul pulled up in front of the building, and there was Kane, opening up the back.

"Before you get mad," Abby said, "let me explain."

Clarke had been more confused than anything, but having her mother tell her not to get mad immediately put her hackles up. 

"I know that you said that you wanted to do things yourself. I understand that. You're strong, independent women, and you don't want to owe anyone anything if you can help it." Clarke saw her mother's gaze flick to Lexa when she said that. "I can appreciate that." She smiled at them as if to soften a blow. "But your father and I always said that when you moved out on your own, we would make sure that you had everything you needed. So I went through the stuff from the old house that I'd put into storage, and asked around to see if my friends had anything that they were replacing that they might be looking to rehome, and, well..." She shrugged. "I know I'm putting you on the spot, just showing up like this. I should have told you sooner, but I was afraid you would refuse considering how stubborn you were about the bedroom set. But I swear to you that everything in this truck is something that someone was going to be getting rid of anyway. I just want to make this transition as easy as it can be for both of you. Having a comfortable place to come home to is part of that."

Clarke looked at Lexa, but her expression was blank, unreadable even to Clarke. 

"I want a list," Clarke said finally. "I want a list of everyone that you got things from."

"Why?" Abby asked. "Clarke, please d—"

"I want to be able to write thank you notes, at least," Clarke said. "It's only polite."

"I can do that," her mother said. "I can definitely do that."

"Okay. I guess we should start getting things moved in then." 

It took them a lot of trips, and a couple of times Clarke thought about putting the brakes on things until they could recruit help, but between the four of them they managed, and she watched as their empty apartment was slowly transformed into a home. She recognized some of it from her childhood home, and the rest of it... she could see the places where it was starting to wear around the edges, so her mother wasn't lying. 

Once they had everything out of the truck, her mother and Marcus went to return the U-Haul, him driving the truck and Abby following behind in her car to drive him back here once it was done. She'd insisted that they were going to take them grocery shopping, at the very least, because she wasn't going to just let them live on Ramen and Easy Mac. 

"You forgot delivery pizza," Clarke had joked. Her mother hadn't found it particularly funny. 

With them gone for the moment, though, it was just the two of them again. "I can't believe she did this," Clarke said, looking around. 

"I can," Lexa said. "She loves you. She wants you to be happy."

"She wants _us_ to be happy," Clarke said, turning to look at Lexa. "It seems like you aren't, though."

"I'm just overwhelmed," Lexa said. "It's... I'm not used to this."

"Not used to what?

"People caring," Lexa said. "Not like this. Not on this scale."

Clarke slid her arms around Lexa's waist. "You're going to have to get used to it," she said. "Because I'm not going anywhere, and neither is she."


	162. Lexa

Anya hefted a backpack into her trunk, stuffing it down and then reaching out to Lexa to hand her another bag. "How is it?" she asked. 

"Still weird," Lexa admitted. "I love waking up with her and falling asleep with her... but it's still weird being in a place that's just ours. I still find myself waking up not knowing where I am, wondering whose room I fell asleep in, and having to remember that it's my room. Our room. That..." She swallowed hard. It had been less than a week. They were still settling in, and she knew that it was only a matter of time before the apartment started to feel like home. It had to, with Clarke in it. Didn't it? 

Anya took her hand and squeezed it. "It's weird for me, too," she said quietly. "Living with someone who isn't you."

Lexa looked at her, her eyebrows drawing together slightly. "It's good though," she said. "Isn't it? Living with Raven."

"It's okay," Anya said, then shook her head slightly. "No, it's good. It's just... different than having her come over and spend the night. Before, our attention was pretty much just on each other because that was the whole point. Now we're living together, but we're also living our lives, and we have to figure out how those fit together. Or _if_ they fit together."

Lexa's frown deepened. "Are you worried they might not?"

"Not..." Anya took a breath, let it out slowly. "I don't know," she admitted, and it was strange for Lexa to see her so uncertain about something. She always seemed to so self-assured, so on top of things, so in control. Now she was in a situation that she didn't – couldn't – control, and it was throwing her off, and that was throwing Lexa off in turn. 

"I think you'll work it out," Lexa said. Not because she was sure that it was true, but because she thought that Anya needed to hear it. And she _did_ think they would work it out. She wasn't certain, because there was so little that was certain in life (death and taxes, as the saying went), but she was confident that if they wanted things to work, that they would make them work.

"She just doesn't have an off switch," Anya said with a crooked smile. "The other night we went to bed together, and I woke up in the middle of the night and she wasn't there. She was in her room tinkering with something. She said that she'd had a eureka moment as she was drifting off to sleep, so she got up to write it down, but she was having a hard time putting it into words so she decided to just try it and see if it worked, and if it did she would worry about documenting it after the fact."

"What did you do?" Lexa asked.

"I said okay, come back to bed when you're done." Anya shrugged. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Did she?" Lexa asked.

"Eventually. A little before dawn." Anya finished wedging the second backpack in and held out her hand again. 

Lexa handed her a small cooler to put into the trunk with the bags. "Did that bother you?"

"Yes," Anya said. "I'm not sure if it should have, but it did."

"Did you talk about it?" Lexa asked.

"What are you, my shrink?" Anya replied. It was hard to tell if she was joking or if she was actually annoyed. Lexa suspected that she meant for it to be a joke, but that it wasn't really funny to her, and she knew that Lexa knew that. 

"No," Lexa said. "I'm your friend. Which sometimes amounts to the same thing for people who would never want to talk to an actual mental health professional in the first place if they had any say in the matter." Like Anya. Like herself. She didn't have anything against psychologists, or psychiatrists, or social workers, or any of the other people one might seek out if one was having problems that they weren't able to deal with on their own. She was glad that they existed and that they were available to help people who needed them. She just knew that she would never be able to open up to a complete stranger. Not about anything that really mattered. Not unless she had no other choice. 

She was very glad not to be in a place where anyone was encouraging her to do so. Not anymore. 

"No, we didn't talk about it," Anya said. "I don't want to make it into a bigger thing than it is, or needs to be."

"If it bothers you—"

"Do I have the right to be bothered?"

"You have the right to feel any way that you feel," Lexa said. "It's what you do with those feelings that matters." The words seemed familiar somehow, and she wondered if Anya had said them to her at some point, and now she was parroting them back, and if that was the case, whether Anya would call her on it, or heed her own advice, or wisdom, or whatever you wanted to call it. 

"Right now I'm choosing to do nothing," Anya said. "A single incident isn't a pattern, and it wasn't as if she'd promised she would stay in bed and then didn't. Even if she had, she's an adult with the right to make her own choices in life."

"Just... make sure you're taking care of yourself," Lexa said. "Sometimes I think you forget that that's just as important as taking care of other people."

"Well if that isn't the pot calling the kettle black," Anya said dryly, but she at least managed a slight smile. "Don't worry," she added. "I'm not going to let myself be turned into a doormat, if that's what you're worried about. Raven wouldn't do that, anyway."

"Not consciously," Lexa said. "But sometimes when you're completely focused on what's going on in your own head, you don't realize what you're doing to other people." She looked right at Anya, and waited for Anya to look back at her. "I know, maybe better than anyone."

"Don't you dare say you're sorry," Anya said. 

"But I am," Lexa said. "I treated you like—"

Anya shook her head. "I let you," she said. "Right up until it hit a point where I couldn't just keep taking it, and then I called you on it, and you changed. Maybe not overnight, maybe not all at once. But you became conscious of it, and you changed, and that's what matters. Okay?"

"Okay," Lexa said.

The conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Lincoln and Octavia. Octavia hopped down out of the passenger's side and looked them both up and down. "I know it's early and maybe you haven't had your coffee, but you both look pretty grim." Her smirk slipped a little. "Nothing's wrong, is it? We're still on?"

"We're still on," Lexa assured her. "Raven and Clarke are inside making sure we haven't missed anything. They'll be out in a minute. Why don't we start getting things loaded into the truck?"

"Okay," Octavia said, still looking slightly suspicious like she wasn't sure she ought to believe Lexa when she said that everything was fine. But she boosted herself up into the bed of the truck and grabbed one of the big coolers as they hefted it up to her, going to work to secure it with Lincoln's help.

As expected, Raven and Clarke came out a couple of minutes later, carrying the last of the bags. It didn't take long for them to get everything loaded, and then Octavia and Lincoln got back in the truck and the rest of them got into Anya's car, with Anya driving and Raven in the passenger's seat, and Clarke and Lexa in the back.

"Déjà vu," Clarke said. 

"You're even sitting on the same sides of the car," Raven said, turning around to look at them. 

Lexa looked at Clarke, thinking back to last year, and Raven was right. "I think we're always like this," she said. "Unless Clarke is driving. Otherwise having her on my left side feels wrong." 

"I wonder if that's a thing," Clarke said. "Like some kind of psychological phenomenon. Maybe there's a name for it." She pulled out her phone and began tapping at the screen, and Lexa had no doubt that she was looking it up. She wondered what search terms one might type in to find something like that. 'Person standing on wrong side of you'? 'Weird feeling of someone being in wrong place'? 

"You're always on my left," Anya pointed out. "Except now."

"That's different," Raven said. "I'm just trying to be polite, trying to avoid accidentally bumping you against the metal that my leg is encased in." She grinned. 

"And if I said that I didn't mind?" Anya asked.

"Maybe I would mind," Raven said. 

"What if we were walking far enough apart that there was no concern that I might bump into it?" Anya asked. 

Raven rolled her eyes. "I just _love_ hypotheticals," she said. 

"Which doesn't actually answer the question," Anya pointed out. 

"It would feel weird," Raven said. "Okay? Is that what you're looking for? But I wouldn't freak out or anything."

"It's not a thing," Clarke said. "Not psychologically. Or at least I can't find anything about it on the internet." 

"So really you're just weirdos," Raven said. "Which we already knew." She grinned. 

"Says the girl building the robot army," Clarke replied. 

"A robot army is not weird," Raven sniffed. "It's useful."

"Even if it makes me feel like maybe I should be locking up the small appliances to keep them safe," Anya said. "For fear that they may be cannibalized in the night."

"I already told you that the new and improved Roomba cannot climb the cabinets to get to them. They're perfectly safe where they are."

"If I remember correctly, what you said was, 'Don't worry. It can't climb the cabinets _yet_.' Which is a small but critical difference."

"Why would you need a Roomba that climbs?" Lexa asked, not entirely sure that she wanted to know the answer. 

"To do the dusting, obviously," Raven said. "Think about it. You just set it up, push a button, and when you wake up in the morning, or get home at the end of the day, the house is dust-free. It would be awesome."

"A Swiffer really isn't that hard to use," Lexa said. 

"Hard, no," Raven said. "But you still have to take the time out of your life to do it, and how often does that actually happen?" She raised an eyebrow at Lexa. 

"Did things ever look dusty when you were over at our house when I was living there?" Lexa countered.

"Not that I noticed," Raven admitted.

"There you go," Lexa said. 

"But it wasn't like I was coming over to look at the furniture," Raven said. 

Lexa just rolled her eyes. Anya was right; she really _didn't_ have an off switch. There was no point in continuing the argument (if that's what it was) when it was clear that there would never actually be a winner.

"I still can't believe you both skipped your graduations," Clarke said when the silence stretched a little too long. "My mom would kill me."

"I went to my undergrad one," Anya said. "Two out of the three attended, and they Skyped or Facetimed it to the one who couldn't be there. I didn't feel any need to go through it again. And do you have any idea how much it costs to get the robes with the hood and everything?" She shook her head. "It's ridiculous, and what do you do with them after?"

"Exactly," Raven said. "Not that I would have the hood part, but it's a real racket. I get the diploma either way, and the degree, so what does it matter if I walk across the stage to get the empty folder to keep it in when I get it later? And I wouldn't have anyone there anyway, so it's a complete waste of time."

"We would have come," Clarke said. "You know that we would have."

"I know," Raven said, her tone softening slightly. "But I honestly didn't want to go. Maybe if we'd had an interesting guest speaker or something, but we didn't even get anything that cool, so why bother? I'd rather be doing this."

They'd moved their (apparently) annual camping trip up to right after the end of the semester rather than around Lexa's birthday this year because Raven had asked them to. She had been able to negotiate not starting her new job immediately after graduation because she hadn't been sure, once she started, how easily she would be able to get any kind of vacation time, at least during the first few months. They'd all agreed, even though it was pretty early in the season (the main season for camping generally being between Memorial Day and Labor Day) because it honestly made things easier for most of them. Like Raven, it was easier for them to set it up to not start right away than to ask for a few days off after they'd already started. It also gave them more time for the trip, which Lexa was choosing to believe would be a good thing. They'd managed three days well enough last year; this year it would be five. Hopefully they wouldn't all get sick of each other.

They'd chosen a different campground, which was a little farther away from home, but a little closer to civilization once they got there in case they ran out of anything, or realized they forgot something. It also offered the opportunity to rent canoes and kayaks, and even sailboats, although as far as Lexa knew none of them knew how to sail. (She wasn't entirely sure that that would stop them from trying.) There was also the usual hiking and swimming options, so she figured they would be able to keep themselves busy enough that they wouldn't drive each other crazy.

Anya turned up the music, and they spent most of the rest of the drive just listening and occasionally singing along. When they arrived at the campground, they discovered that their site actually allowed them to drive right up, although there was only room for one of the vehicles. They quickly shifted things from Anya's trunk to the back of the truck, leaving the car behind in the lot. It was tempting to pack themselves in the back of the truck as well for the short drive, but it was also illegal, and they didn't want to run into any problems, especially this early in the trip.

They got everything unloaded, and put up the tents while they were still full of energy. Lincoln had brought an air compressor, which made inflating the air mattresses quick and easy. Last year they'd had a tire pump, which got the job done better than trying to do it with their own lung power, but this was even better. Then he pulled out a little open-sided pavilion type thing which would lend them some extra shade, and Anya swore that she would have kissed him if she wasn't afraid that Octavia would find a nest of fire ants and release them into her tent at night if she did. 

"She would never do that," Raven said. "She likes me too much." 

Octavia just grinned. 

They set up their food under the pavilion. "It would be even better if it had screen sides to keep the bugs out," Anya commented. 

"The friend I borrowed this from has one like that," Lincoln said, "but it's smaller, and he said that this one is sturdier. He also said that the screen one isn't nearly as effective at keeping bugs out as you'd like, and generally once they get in, they can't get back out, and that's even worse."

"This is great," Anya said. "Thank you for thinking of it."

"Of course," Lincoln said.

Lexa lugged their backpacks and sleeping bags from the truck to their tent and Clarke followed her in, helping her unzip the two bags. She waited for Lexa to spread a sheet on the bottom one before zipping the second one on top, making a bag built for two. She sat on the edge and held out her arms to Lexa. "C'mere," she said.

Lexa sat beside her, and let herself be pulled down, wrapping an arm over Clarke's waist. "It's going to heat up in here fast," she said. "And I don't mean that euphemistically." 

Clarke laughed. "I know. Just for a minute."

"Is everything okay?" Clarke asked. "When we came out this morning, you and Anya looked pretty serious."

"Octavia's word was grim," Lexa said. "We were just talking about how it feels strange not living together anymore." A line formed between Clarke's eyebrows, and Lexa kissed her there to try to make it disappear. "Strange doesn't mean bad," she added softly. "Just different."

"I know," Clarke said, but she did look slightly relieved at the confirmation from Lexa. "Honestly, it feels kind of strange to me, too."

"How so?"

"Well, I was pretty much living with you and Anya all year. Now I'm just living with you. I wake up and I'm not in my dorm room and I'm not in your room and I'm not even in my room in the apartment O and I had last summer, and it just... takes a second. I know I'm okay because you're next to me... but then sometimes you're not because you went out for a run, and I just..." She shrugged. "It will get better." But it kind of sounded like a question.

"It's only been a few days," Lexa reminded them both. Again. Like she did several times a day every day since they'd moved. "Maybe this will help. Maybe being somewhere completely different and then going back to the apartment will make it seem more familiar somehow."

"Maybe," Clarke said. "As long we're together, that's what matters, right?"

Lexa answered her with a kiss, and decided that maybe she hadn't been speaking entirely euphemistically after all.


	163. Clarke

On Friday morning, they woke up to rain. Not just a drizzle, but a steady soaking rain that trickled off the rain flies over the tents in long, near-constant drips. Clarke looked at Lexa, frowning. "The tent isn't going to soak through, is it?" she asked. "They're waterproof, aren't they?"

"Water resistant might be more accurate," Lexa said. She unzipped the flap on the tent that made a window and looked out. "The good news is that the rain seems to be coming straight down; it doesn't seem to be too windy. If the wind was blowing it into the tent walls, it would be much more likely to soak through. We can shift things towards the middle of the tent anyway, just in case."

Clarke tried to let herself be reassured by Lexa's so-called good news, but she hoped that this was just a passing squall, and that the day would brighten up in a few hours. Once they had everything shifted around, they made their way quickly from their tent to their little covered eating area, where Anya was grumbling because her breakfast plans has been derailed by the fact that it was too wet to light a fire to cook on. "We have cereal and bread and peanut butter and stuff," she said. "But there's not going to be eggs or bacon or anything else that requires heat."

"Was this in the forecast?" Octavia asked. "I swear I didn't see it in the forecast last time I checked."

"When was the last time you checked?" Raven asked. 

"Before we left yesterday! It said there was a chance of rain showers, but this is definitely more than a shower."

Raven pulled out her phone and tapped on the screen. Her face screwed up in displeasure. "Doesn't look like it's going to clear up any time soon, either," she said. 

"What do you mean?" Clarke asked. "Like not any time this morning, or not any time this weekend?"

"It looks like maybe by dinnertime?" Raven said. "But probably not before that."

There was a collective groan as they watched all of their plans for the day wash (almost literally) down the drain. "I've got a pack of cards," Lincoln said. "We won't be completely bored."

But it turned out that a pack of cards could only entertain a group of six people for a couple of hours before they started to get antsy. That, combined with the cold and damp that they had no real shelter from, had everyone in pretty foul moods by lunchtime, which was sandwiches because they still couldn't cook anything. 

"We could go into town," Clarke finally suggested, when everyone's tone of voice started to develop edges. "If nothing else, we can at least find somewhere that sells board games or something to give us something to do until this lets up."

" _If_ it lets ups," Octavia said gloomily. "But sure, fine. Why not? Who doesn't want to hike down the parking lot in the rain?"

"You can ride in the truck," Clarke said. 

"No I can't," Octavia said. "Raven needs to. She's much more likely to slip in the mud, or she might rust like the Tin Man or something."

Raven snorted. "I don't know whether to be insulted or amused."

"Both," Lincoln said with a wink. "Both is good."

So Raven rode with Lincoln and the rest of them made do with the emergency ponchos that had thankfully gotten packed, and they headed into town to see what they could find. They found a Target which contained a Starbucks, and Clarke breathed in the caffeinated steam as she wrapped her hands around her cup, then breathed out a sigh of happiness. She couldn't speak for anyone else, but the lack of coffee that morning had certainly contributed to her less than stellar mood. She hoped that maybe that was true for at least some of the others, and maybe this would help.

Anya headed off for the sports section where they kept the camping equipment while the rest of them headed for the toy department. The selection of board games wasn't great, but they bought a few just to have options, and then met up with Anya at the register. She showed them a little portable propane grill that she'd found. "Even if the rain doesn't stop," she said, "we can at least have something hot for dinner."

"Good thinking," Lincoln said. 

Once they were done shopping, they headed back to the campsite, and finally decided that they might as well play Monopoly because it took forever, and it seemed like they had plenty of time to kill. 

"I hate this game," Lexa announced as she had to pay Raven for landing on one of the properties she owned and had developed. "What are we teaching kids? The whole point of life is to buy up a bunch of property so that you can get rich and screw over everyone else?"

"Pretty much," Raven said. "That doesn't mean you get out of paying just because you morally object."

"When you have kids, you can make up your own communist Monopoly," Anya teased. 

Lexa rolled her eyes, and Clarke wasn't sure if it was at the idea that she was ever going to have kids (she didn't know if Lexa and Anya had ever talked about it the way that they had talked; just because there wouldn't have been a pressing reason to didn't mean it had never come up in conversation) or at the idea of a communist version of Monopoly. Which was, of course, antithetical. 

Apparently the comment had planted a seed in Lexa's mind, though, because she proceeded to throw the entire game off-kilter by buying as many properties as she could, and then refusing to accept payment when people landed on them. "I'm declaring them National Parks," she said. "Entrance is free." 

This would have resulted in her losing quickly and rather spectacularly... until people decided to make donations when they 'visited' one of the 'parks'... sometimes in excess of what the actual rent would be. And then Raven decided that they ought to start paying property taxes on what they owned, and that went into the community chest, and some of that money was then slipped to Lexa to support the National Park Service (aka Lexa). And then when it looked like Lincoln was in danger of going bankrupt, Octavia decided to crowdfund a bailout to keep him from going under, and that was how they spent an entire afternoon playing one game of Monopoly in which no one ever lost, so technically no one ever won. They only stopped because they were getting hungry and Anya needed the table to cook on. They didn't even bother to count their money at the end.

"I guess communist Monopoly isn't such an oxymoron after all," Clarke said. 

"I think it was more socialist Monopoly," Lexa said. 

"Semantics," Clarke told her. "Help with dinner or get out of the way?"

"Anya?" 

"I'm good," Anya said. "I've got everything prepped already."

"Okay." They retreated to their tent, shedding their soggy outer layers before laying down on the sleeping bags. Clarke put her head on Lexa's shoulder and wrapped and arm and leg over her, pressing tight against her side. "I'm sorry it rained," she said. 

"Why?"

"I don't know," Clarke admitted. She felt Lexa's arms tighten around her and her lips press to her forehead. 

"Don't apologize if you have nothing to be sorry for," Lexa said. "I know that that's what women are trained to do pretty much from birth, to apologize for feeling or thinking or taking up space, but you don't have to do that with me. Or with anyone, but especially not with me."

Clarke nuzzled against her neck. "I'm sorry I said I'm sorry," she said, and a second later she found herself flipped and pinned by a laughing Lexa. 

Before things could go too far (or before they could go far enough... Clarke couldn't decide) they were called to dinner. As they ate, the rain finally stopped, and then Octavia, who was sitting on the opposite side of the table, gasped and pointed. 

Clarke turned to look, and above the trees arched a rainbow, with a faint second arch above it. "Oh wow..." she breathed.

"I need..." Lexa started, but didn't finish, just got up and ran to their tent. She came out again a minute later with her camera, and spent what seemed like a very long time fiddling with it, getting the settings just right, Clarke assumed, to capture the moment. Clarke hoped that it wouldn't already have passed by the time that she got it sorted out. But it hung on for quite a while, and when she came back to the table the pictures were clear as day, far better than any of the rest of them had managed to capture with the cameras on their phones. 

By the time they'd cleaned up dinner, the clouds had mostly cleared from the sky, and they were all grateful for the fact that they had had the foresight to put a tarp over their firewood so they were able to get a fire started without too much fuss.

They next day dawned clear and bright, and much warmer than the day before, and they spent it in the pursuit of making up for the time they'd missed out on the day before... although they did discover the hard way that there was a rather significant difference between the temperature of lake water in early May versus late June, and swimming was pretty quickly taken off the list of things that they had any desire to do again. So their water-based activities were limited to boating, and then further limited to boats that moved only under the power of a human being with a paddle when they discovered that the answer to the question 'How hard can sailing be?' was, 'Harder than it looks.' They didn't capsize, but it was a pretty near miss, and not one that any of them cared to repeat. 

Sunday was more of the same, and by the time they got to the end of the day, they were all pretty well exhausted, and Clarke at least had discovered muscles that she previously hadn't known she had... because they were now sore. "Just wait until I take you surfing," Lexa said, grinning. They had laid out a blanket a little way away from the campfire, and were watching the stars come out. 

"When is that going to be?" Clarke asked.

"I don't know," Lexa said. "Whenever we go to Hawaii."

"Okay," Clarke said. "You know that I'm not even half as athletic as you are, right? You remember that?"

"I know," Lexa said. "But I also know that you'll try, and even if you decide you hate it, you'll have given it your best shot... and you'll feel it the next day." 

"And then what will you do?" Clarke asked. 

"I'll kiss it and make it better, of course," Lexa said. 

Clarke might have suggested a demonstration, but they were outdoors and not far enough away from everyone else that they wouldn't be seen. So she just stole a single kiss and settled back down beside her. Not long after, she heard someone approaching, and propped herself up on an elbow to look.

"Mind if we join you?" Octavia asked. 

_Yes,_ Clarke thought, but she shook her head. "Go ahead." 

Lincoln and Octavia spread out their own blanket next to them, and then Raven and Anya came over as well, and they all stared up at the stars, and Clarke thought back to the conversations they'd had last year, about how looking up at a sky like this could make you feel so small, so insignificant. 

But she didn't feel small, or insignificant. Not here, not now. Here, she felt safe, secure in their own little bubble where things were peaceful, and where they looked out for each other and took care of each other. Where she had the family that she felt as if she'd lost when her father died. And that family wasn't just the six people here, although they were the core of it. There were other friends who sort of filled the place of cousins – close but not as close, there for you when you needed them but not people that you necessarily talked to or saw every day. And that actually made her feel pretty damn significant.

"You see that one there?" Octavia asked. "That's Polaris. And from Polaris comes Ursa Minor. And that one, see, that's Draco." She continued to point out constellations, not-quite whispering into the night the stories behind them. 

"I didn't know you knew so much about mythology," Clarke said. "Or astronomy." She wasn't sure why she was surprised, except that it didn't seem like there would have been much opportunity to go out stargazing in the Blake household. Where they lived was lit up like a Christmas tree most of the time, and she didn't know how they would have gotten far enough away to be able to really see the night sky clearly, without all of the light pollution.

"Bellamy taught me," Octavia said. "When he was really little, my mom would read him mythology instead of fairy tales. I don't know if it was because she thought fairy tales were for girls, or just because she liked them better, but that's what she read him, and so those were the stories he read and told me."

"When you talk about growing up," Raven said, "you make it sound like he practically raised you."

"He practically did," Octavia said. 

"But he's not that much older than you."

"I know." Octavia sighed. "I always felt like I was forced to grow up fast... but as fast as I had to grow up, he had to grow up faster, because he had to stay ahead of me. Sometimes I wonder if he ever got the chance to be a kid. I don't really think he did."

"That's not your fault," Clark heard Lincoln say softly. "That's not on you."

"I know," Octavia said, but she didn't sound like she believed it. 

Clarke wished there was something that she could do, something that she could say, but she couldn't go back and change the past, and she wondered if Octavia would want her to if she could. Her past had shaped her, and would she really want to change that, and possibly change who she'd become? 

Given the choice, would _any_ of them go back and change anything about their pasts? She wondered, but she didn't ask. Maybe Lexa would want to change the fact that Costia died, but if she did that...

She must have tensed, because Lexa turned her head to look at her, then reached out and drew her closer. "What's wrong?" she whispered. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

"The Ghost of Christmas Future, maybe," Clarke whispered back. "I just..." The words clogged in her throat, and she shook her head. "It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters," Lexa said. "But if you don't want to talk about it, I won't make you." 

Clarke nodded, and forced herself to tune back into Octavia's stories that were written in the night sky, even if she really couldn't tell one cluster of stars from another. Finally, Octavia ran out of stories, and the fire burned down to embers, and they all headed off to bed as the chill of the still late spring night settled over them. Clarke pretended that that was what was making her shiver as she climbed into the sleeping bag with Lexa.

Lexa frowned and pulled Clarke in again, holding her tight, maybe trying to lend Clarke her own warmth, but it felt like for once it couldn't penetrate her skin. She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, and finally Lexa switched off the lantern, plunging them into darkness. 

Only then, when she couldn't see her face, did Clarke ask, "If you could go back and... and save Costia, keep her from dying, would you?"

"Yes," Lexa said, without hesitation. "She deserved better than that. She deserved the chance to live, to do all of the things that she said she was going to. But Clarke," she stopped, waited until Clarke was looking at her even though they couldn't actually see each other, "that doesn't mean I would change any of this. That doesn't mean I would change _us_." Clarke felt Lexa's fingers slide into her hair, pulling it back gently from her face, and those long fingers cradled the back of her skull. She felt Lexa's forehead rest against hers, felt their noses brush, and then Lexa's breath on her lips. "I hate to indulge in what ifs and if onlys, and there's no way to know how any of this would have played out if things had been different. But if I had to... Costia wouldn't die that night. She would live, but she would leave angry, and I would let her. I don't think... I think that would have been the end of us, that night. I think we were too different in some of the ways that counted most, and I don't think we would have lasted. And I think that would have hurt, and I think I would have grieved, and I think maybe I would have tried to close off my heart again, because look how it had turned out opening it up the first time. And then I would have met you... and maybe some of the details would be different but the story itself would stay the same. I would want it to stay the same."

"Oh," Clarke said. She wasn't sure if the tears on her cheeks were Lexa's or her own. Both, probably, and she wiped them away, first from her own face and then from Lexa's, and then she kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her, and let today's chapter of the story fade to black.


	164. Lexa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as a heads up - a big time jump has happened. The last chapter takes place after their sophomore year. This one takes place in the fall of their senior year.

Lexa was not unaware of the complete role reversal that was happening as she stood in front of the stove and Anya leaned on the counter behind her. She was also not unaware of the fact that Anya was silently laughing at her. "Stop it," she said without turning around.

"Stop what?" Anya asked, and Lexa was sure that she was wearing her most angelic expression... which wasn't particularly angelic, and she knew Anya knew it. 

"Smirking. Rolling your eyes. Whatever you're doing. Just stop it."

"I'll stop when you do," Anya said. Lexa heard her pull out one of the stools and sit on it. 

" _I'm_ not doing anything," Lexa said. She reached down into the cabinet to pull out a pan, then went to the cupboards for flour and the fridge for buttermilk, gathering the ingredients she would need to make pancakes. 

Anya snorted. "You're freaking out," she said. "Over nothing."

"It's not nothing," Lexa snapped, not meaning for the words to come out as sharply as they did, but she couldn't help it. She'd been on edge for days, and she was only just managing to conceal it from Clarke. She suspected that Clarke knew that something was going on, but she probably just chalked it up to stress from classes or something. Senior year and worry about the future, maybe. Law school applications...

And that was part of it. But not all of it. Not even most of it. 

Anya sighed. "You know how to make pancakes, Lexa. You don't need me to show you. Or to... supervise, or whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing right now." 

"I just need to make sure that I get it right," Lexa said, carefully measuring her ingredients and mixing them together. "I need everything to be perfect."

"Do you honestly think she's going to care if—"

" _I_ care," Lexa said, finally turning and looking – glaring – at Anya. "Okay? I care. I have to get this right, or..." She shrugged.

"Or nothing," Anya said. She stood up and came around the counter, but Lexa took a step back to stay out of reach, and Anya held up her hands in surrender. "What are you worried about? Do you really think she's going to care if the eggs are runny or the pancakes are burned around the edges or any of the other ways that you seem to think breakfast is going to go wrong?"

"No."

"Then what?"

"She might not... She might think it's crazy. That I'm crazy." Lexa frowned. "Is it? Am I?"

"Yes and yes," Anya said. "But in the best possible way. She's not going to—"

The door to the room that used to be Lexa's crashed open. "Ooh, are you making _pancakes_?" Tris asked. "I'm starving."

"They're not ready yet," Lexa said. Her eyes flicked to Anya, who lifted and hand a let it drop, like, 'I didn't know she was here, either.'

"Obviously," Tris said. "Are you making bacon?" She grinned. "Makin' bacon."

"I wasn't going to," Lexa said. "I was going to make eggs." 

"Can I make bacon?" Tris looked at Anya. "We have some, right? I put it on the list."

"And I bought it," Anya said. 

"We can't both be cooking on the stove at the same time," Lexa said. "There's not enough room."

Tris looked over her shoulder from where she'd stuck her head into the fridge, trying to find the promised bacon. "Did Anya teach you nothing?" she asked. "You make bacon in the oven and you don't get grease splattered everywhere."

"Fine," Lexa said. "If it will make you happy."

"Bacon makes everyone happy," Tris said. "Except vegetarians, I guess. But I think even vegetarians secretly miss bacon." 

Lexa just shook her head, stepping out of the way so that Tris could get to the drawer under the oven where the sheet trays were kept, and then into the cupboard to get a sheet of parchment paper to lay strips out on. 

"You are not making _all_ of the bacon," Anya said. "Even if you would probably eat it all."

Tris heaved a sigh. "Fine, _Mom_ ," she said, and wrapped up what was left before slipping the sheet tray in the oven and setting a timer. 

"I'm not your mother," Anya said. 

"No sh—sugar cookies," Tris said, stopped mid-swear by a look from Anya. "If you were, I wouldn't live here." She went back to the refrigerator and pulled out a carton of juice, pouring herself a glass. "Anyone else?"

They shook their heads and Tris put the juice away. "I'm gonna go shower quick," she said. "Call me when the bacon beeps."

Lexa waited for the bathroom door to shut, carefully ladling batter onto the griddle until she heard the water turn on, which ought to keep Tris from overhearing. " _Does_ she live here now?" she asked.

"Officially? No," Anya said. "Unofficially, yeah. Pretty much. She goes home when she has to, but at this point that's limited to when she needs her mother to sign something or pay for something. It's an arrangement that seems to work for both of them."

"And her living here?" Lexa asked. "Does that work for you?"

"Do you think I would have let it get to this point if it didn't?" Anya countered. 

"I don't know," Lexa said. "If she needed a place to stay... you kind of have a thing about taking care of broken girls." 

"She's not broken," Anya said. 

"Okay," Lexa said. "You're just... like an overcooked marshmallow. All dark and carcinogenic on the outside, soft and gooey on the inside." She grinned and dodged the pot holder that Anya tossed at her head, grateful that it didn't land in her bowl of batter. 

"It works for all of us," Anya said. "We're making it work. It's a work in progress." She grimaced, and Lexa wasn't sure if it was because it wasn't as easy as she might like it to be, or just because she'd used the word 'work' too many times in a row. Possibly both. Probably both. "She's a good kid. Just sometimes we kind of have to remind her that we're _not_ her parents, and that she doesn't have to fight us on every little thing just for the sake of fighting." 

Lexa nodded, although she wasn't entirely sure she understood. She flipped over the pancakes, pleased with the golden brown color of them. "I was thinking maybe I would do something a little different," she said. "For Clarke. Maybe cinnamon or something."

Anya cocked her head, thinking. "What about doing a swirl in them like a cinnamon bun, and instead of regular syrup, you do the frosting, glaze, whatever you want to call it like you would put on top of that?"

"Do you think that would work?" Lexa asked. 

"We could try it," Anya said. She came into the kitchen and pulled a cookbook from a shelf, flipping through until she found a recipe for cinnamon rolls. "I would say you could just make her cinnamon rolls, but they're a pain in the ass, and you are _not_ going to use the kind in the can. Not for this." She gathered ingredients to make the filling and the icing, and then put the filling into a piping bag so that Lexa could draw a swirl of it into the next set of pancakes she put on. It was a little messy and lopsided, but it looked okay, and she would probably get better with a little practice.

"You could do designs if you wanted to," Anya said. "Hey, you could spell—"

"No," Lexa said. "Don't even finish that thought, because there is no way in hell."

"You're no fun," Anya said, pretending to pout.

"None at all," Lexa said. "Did you learn nothing from living with me for a year and a half?"

"Nothing at all," Anya said. She leaned back against the counter. "Huh."

"What?"

"I just realized... we've now lived apart for almost the exact same length of time that we lived together. You moved in with me at Christmas, and moved out a year and a half later... roughly. And now you've been living with Clarke for... actually, longer," Anya said. 

"And you've been living with Raven," Lexa pointed out. Neither of the transitions had been entirely smooth, but when was learning how to live with someone ever without a few bumps and hitches along the way? She wondered if it had changed things for Anya and Raven now that they didn't really have a choice about sharing a room, but she didn't ask. She wasn't sure it was her place, and Tris would be out any minute, undoubtedly lured by the combined aromas of bacon and cinnamon. "I'm glad that things worked out," she said. "That we found people who can... deal with us?" She smiled crookedly.

"I hope it's a little more than just dealing with us," Anya said. "But yeah, I know. Me too."

* * *

Lexa was glad that her early morning runs had made it so that Clarke barely stirred when she got out of bed in the morning. She hoped that she could be keep quiet enough in the kitchen that she wouldn't accidentally wake her up. She'd tried to arrange it so that everything she would need was in easy reach (without making it obvious that she was up to something, which was difficult because Clarke was damnably observant). If she _had_ noticed anything, Lexa hoped that she would just assume that she was planning a birthday surprise. 

Which wasn't wrong. It just also wasn't the whole truth.

But it was easier to think of it that way than to think about the rest of it... and how spectacularly wrong it could possibly go. 

Lexa swallowed and rubbed at her stomach as if that could ease the knots that trapped the butterflies, and got to work mixing up the batter for pancakes, and then the goo to make the cinnamon swirls, and then the icing to drizzle on top of them. She kept looking at the clock, and pausing to look down the hall to make sure that she didn't hear Clarke moving around. There were mornings when she got impatient waiting for her girlfriend to wake up, but this wasn't one of them.

Finally everything was done, and she placed it all carefully on a tray that they had acquired at some point, but she wasn't entirely sure when or where from. Not that it mattered. She edged down the hall, careful not to jostle the tray. The last thing she needed was the coffee or juice tipping over and spilling into the plate, ruining everything. 

She set the tray down carefully on top of one of the dressers, and went to the bed, sitting on the edge and leaning over Clarke. She brushed back her hair from her face and stroked her temple. "Good morning, Clarke," she whispered.

Clarke's eyes opened slightly, then more fully as she smelled the food and coffee. She glanced over toward the dresser, then back at Lexa, her lips curving into a smile. "Good morning, Lexa," she replied.

"Happy birthday." She leaned down and kissed her when Clarke pouted her lips, giving in to her grasping hands and snuggling for a minute before sitting back up again. "I made you breakfast."

"I see that," Clarke said. "Or smell it." She pushed herself up so that she was sitting propped against the headboard, and accepted the tray that Lexa handed her, then patted the spot next to her, inviting her back to bed, and Lexa went because what else was she going to do? 

"Thank you," Clarke said, and then took a bite of the pancakes. Lexa watched as she chewed, and then her eyes rolled back and she made a sound that was almost a groan. "That's so good," she said. She cut off another bite and offered it to Lexa. 

She thought about refusing, telling her that she'd eaten while she'd cooked, but she didn't want to lie to her, and she didn't want to explain that she wasn't sure that she was going to be able to swallow anything, so instead she just opened her mouth and took the bite, and it _was_ good, thank god, so at least she hadn't messed that much of the morning up. 

"I made it for you," Lexa said when Clarke offered her more. 

"There's more here than I can eat," Clarke said. "This is what happens when you learn from the Anya Colville School of Cooking. You cook for an army whether there's a war on or not."

Lexa laughed. "Fine," she said, and shared the breakfast, which really was kind of too big for one person, but she wasn't very good at scaling down recipes. Not when there were thirds of cups involved. The food, once her body decided that it wasn't going to reject it, actually helped settle her nerves... until it was gone, and Clarke set the tray aside. 

"I have—" Lexa swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. "I have one more present for you," she managed. 

"You really _do_ love me," Clarke teased. "You're not even making me wait."

Lexa wasn't going to be handed a better opening than that.

"I do," Lexa said, shifting so that she was sitting in front of Clarke instead of beside her. "I love you more than anything, more than anyone... more than I ever imagined I would, or _could_ love anyone. When you came into my life..."

She faltered, and Clarke's forehead furrowed as she reached out and took her hand, Lexa's left hand with her own left, and again, it was like the universe was setting things up for her, giving her a sign... and the words that she'd tried to rehearse and never gotten right finally lined themselves up.

"I didn't used to believe in signs," she said. "I didn't used to believe in fate. Then you walked into my life, stepping over the wreckage as if it wasn't even there, even though you were weighed down by your own baggage, and... something clicked, and everything just started to fall into place, and it's just kept falling. Not perfectly, not all the time, but..." She squeezed Clarke's hand. "You're the light that made me think maybe there was an end to the darkness after all. You're the sun and the moon and the stars. You're... you're the best part of everything. You gave me hope when I'd almost given up, and I started to imagine a future again. And I didn't – and don't – know what that future will bring. There's no way for anyone to know that. But I do know that whatever it brings... I want you in it. Whatever comes, I want you at my side so we can face it together."

Clarke's eyes widened, and Lexa's stomach fluttered. She hoped that the working of Clarke's jaw wasn't her trying to find the words to stop her from saying what she was about to say, from doing what she was about to do. 

She shifted again so that she was on her knees, kneeling in front of her on the bed, and reached into her pocket to pull out a ring. "Clarke Marie Griffin, will you marry me?"

Clarke just stared at the ring in Lexa's hand, and at their joined hands, and finally, she lifted her eyes to Lexa's, and they were brimming with tears and Lexa didn't know what that meant because she wasn't _saying_ anything, and—

She toppled backward as Clarke crashed into her, their mouths colliding in a bruising kiss. "Yes," Clarke said, her lips still brushing Lexa's. "Yes."

Both of their hands were shaking, but Lexa managed to slide the ring on, and Clarke looked at it – stared at it – her body pressed hard into Lexa's like she needed to root herself in her, and maybe she did. 

"I hope you weren't expecting diamonds," Lexa said, kissing the side of her neck. "You don't really strike me as a diamond kind of girl." 

Clarke laughed. Clearly she hadn't forgotten the rant she'd gone on last Valentine's Day when every other commercial was trying to convince men that the only way to show their girlfriends, wives, mistresses, whatever that they loved them was with diamonds.

"No," Clarke said. "No. It's beautiful. It's perfect." It was a striated silver, the metal coming (or so the jeweler claimed) from a meteorite, with a strip of dyed blue wood on either side. She looked at Lexa and smiled... but then it slipped. "You need a ring," she said.

"I'll have a ring," Lexa said. "When—"

"No, now," Clarke said. "I want you to have a ring now."

"Okay," Lexa said, a little startled by how insistent she was.

"I'll have to—" Clarke started, but stopped when Lexa leaned over to pull a box from the drawer of her night stand. She handed it to Clarke, who opened it and then looked at Lexa startled. "What's...?"

"Along with your dislike for diamonds," Lexa said, "you once mentioned that it always seemed a little ridiculous that the bride ended up with two rings, and why wasn't one enough? When I got your ring made, the jeweler mentioned that if we were going to use them as wedding bands, it was best to get them at the same time so he could work from the same piece of metal so they would have the same coloring and everything." The only difference between the two was that the wood inlaid in Lexa's was dyed green.

"Give me your hand," Clarke said. Lexa held out her left hand, and Clarke's fingers were really shaking now as she pulled the ring from the box. She looked down at Lexa's hand, then up at her face. "Lexa Chandler Woods, will _you_ marry _me_?"

Lexa fought back a smile. "I thought you'd never ask."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone curious as to what Clarke's ring looks like, [click here](https://goo.gl/photos/T2jvhpg68FYWtwud7). And yes, I went with green for Lexa, not red, despite canon. 
> 
> Also, if you're wondering how Anya and Raven ended up with Tris living with them... I'm writing that, and hopefully will post it later this week. *g*


	165. Clarke

Life didn't stop for the good things any more than it stopped for the bad ones, and eventually Clarke had to let Lexa go so that she could get to class... hopefully on time, but given how many times Clarke had delayed her actually getting out of bed, it was going to be close. 

She picked up her phone and snapped a picture of her ring... and then realized that maybe finding out from social media wasn't the best way to go, at least with the people she cared about most. So she sent a text to Raven and Octavia, then dialed her mom. 

"Hey sweetheart," Abby said when she picked up. "Happy birthday!"

"Thank you," Clarke said. "It definitely is." 

She thought she heard her mother stop whatever she was doing. "I'm glad to hear it," she said, but there was just the faintest hint of a question in her voice. 

Her phone buzzed, but she didn't stop to look at the message. "Lexa..." She swallowed, a sudden wave of butterflies in her stomach, because what if her mother didn't approve? Not of Lexa – she knew that wouldn't be a problem – but of the fact that they were engaged? A list of objections formed in her head, and she started to plan counterarguments. 

"Lexa...?" Abby prompted. 

"She proposed," Clarke said. "This morning."

A pause that stretched for a breath, then two (or it would have been if Clarke had been breathing), and then her mother said, "Oh honey, congratulations! That's wonderful!"

Clarke blinked, and air filled her lungs again even as she felt as if the world had been tipped on its axis. No 'You're too young to be engaged'? No 'I'm not sure you should be making that kind of decision/commitment at this point in your life'? 

"It is," she said. "I totally didn't see it coming, but... yeah, it's amazing." Her phone buzzed again, and then a third time, and maybe she should have waited to text Raven and O until after she'd talked her mom, but whatever. 

"I'm so happy for you."

"Thank you," Clarke said. Her phone kept buzzing, and yeah, having a group text happening while trying to hold a conversation had been a bad plan. "I should go," she said. "I'll talk to you later?"

"Of course," Abby said. "I'm sure you have plenty of other people to tell. I won't keep you."

"I love you," Clarke said.

"I love you too," her mom replied. "Give my love to Lexa, too."

"I will." She hung up and looked at her phone and the string of messages that popped up.

 **CLARKE:** Did either of you know?

 **OCTAVIA:** Know what?

 **RAVEN:** It's too early in the morning for riddles, Griffin.

 **OCTAVIA:** Happy birthday, btw.

 **RAVEN:** Oh yeah. HIPY PAPY BTHUTHDTH THUTHDA BTHUTHDY. and all that.

 **OCTAVIA:** WTF? Could you at least pretend to be enthusiastic, Ray-Rey?

 **RAVEN:** I was up all night working on a project. Cut me some slack. And don't call me that.

 **OCTAVIA:** I'll call you whatever I want to. Aren't there, like, labor laws?

 **RAVEN:** It wasn't for work.

 **OCTAVIA:** What was it for?

 **RAVEN:** Keeping Tris from failing Chemistry.

 **OCTAVIA:** You're doing her homework now?

 **RAVEN:** Oh she was up with me. Don't you worry. 

**CLARKE:** Sorry, sorry. I'm back. So you didn't know?

Octavia and Raven's messages came in almost simultaneously.

 **OCTAVIA:** Know WHAT?!  
**RAVEN:** Know what?

Clarke sent them the picture of the ring. 

**CLARKE:** Lexa proposed.

 **OCTAVIA:** HOLY SHIT!

 **RAVEN:** Well it's about damn time.

 **CLARKE:** So you DID know!

 **RAVEN:** Who, me? 

**OCTAVIA:** CONGRATULATIONS! THIS IS THE BEST NEWS EVER. HAVE YOU PICKED A DATE?

 **CLARKE:** Yes you, R. No, O. It just happened like an hour ago.

 **OCTAVIA:** YOU WAITED A WHOLE HOUR TO TELL ME? I'M INSULTED.

 **RAVEN:** Easy there, Capslock. And no, I didn't know. But you two have been completely sickeningly in love for years now. 

**CLARKE:** Well yeah, but... 

**RAVEN:** There was part of me that thought maybe after the election, when no one knew how things were going to go, whether they were going to go after the Supreme Court decision, that you might do it then. Because it would be harder for them to invalidate something that was already done than to block more people from being able to.

 **CLARKE:** I didn't even think of that, honestly.

 **OCTAVIA:** Oooh, Griffin, you're going to have to decide which of us is going to be your maid of honor.

 **RAVEN:** I'm not wearing a dress.

 **CLARKE:** Okay. We haven't gotten that far, O. 

**OCTAVIA:** You're not just going to do the courthouse thing, are you? Promise me you won't be that lame. You need to have a real wedding.

 **CLARKE:** We haven't talked about it. 

She paused, because they _hadn't_ talked about it, and just because Lexa had proposed, just because they were wearing rings on their fingers, didn't mean that they were going to rush into getting married, did it? Not that it felt like rushing. Because now that Raven said it, about how she couldn't believe that they'd waited this long... there was a part of her that kind of felt that way, too. But then there was another part of her that felt like they kind of already _were_ married, in every way but on paper, and that piece of paper hadn't really felt like it mattered that much. 

And when she _really_ thought about it, she realized that that feeling had started a long, long time ago, when their relationship was still almost brand new. It had started the morning after Veelu was born, when Lexa had started talking about soulmates. What had she said? 'A part of me woke up and said, 'Oh, it's you. It's always been you. It will always be you.''

Her eyes filled with tears and she reached for a tissue to blot them away. 

**CLARKE:** I promise I'll tell you as soon as I have more details. 

**OCTAVIA:** We're going out tonight. We're celebrating. Your birthday, your engagement, everything. You don't get to say no.

 **RAVEN:** Nope, you don't. Congrats, Clarke. Seriously. You two were made for each other. Even if you make us all a little queasy and/or diabetic. I'm gonna go nap.

 **CLARKE:** Okay. I'll see you later, apparently.

 **OCTAVIA:** Night, Ray-Rey.

 **RAVEN:** Has anyone ever told you you're the worst?

Octavia sent her the kiss emoji, and Raven replied with the eyerolling emoji, and then it devolved into an entire string of little pictures and finally Clarke just put her phone down because she needed to get ready for her own class. She was on her way out the door when she remembered that she'd been going to post about this, so she quickly typed something up and then headed out. 

She wasn't even halfway to class when her phone started blowing up, and she was just sitting down when she got a text from Lexa. 

**LEXA:** What did you do?! My phone hasn't stopped vibrating for the last 10 minutes!

 **CLARKE:** Sorry not sorry. Posted a picture of the ring... which you would know if you were on any social media whatsoever.

 **LEXA:** I just don't check it constantly. I don't need to know every detail of everyone I know's life. But I'll go look.

 **CLARKE:** Okay, I'll wait. 

She went back to look herself, her smile widening. The picture wasn't even that great – it didn't capture just how brilliant the blue was, or the amazing criss-cross lines in the metal very well – but it didn't matter. With it she'd posted the caption: Best birthday present ever from the best girlfriend ever. Wait, did I say girlfriend? I meant fiancée.

A second later her phone buzzed again.

 **LEXA:** I love you.

 **CLARKE:** I love you too. 

**LEXA:** I like that word.

 **CLARKE:** Which one?

 **LEXA:** Fiancée.

 **CLARKE:** Me too.

 **LEXA:** So we're going out tonight?

 **CLARKE:** O?

 **LEXA:** Yeah.

 **CLARKE:** Apparently.

 **LEXA:** Okay.

 **CLARKE:** Gotta go. Class. Love you.

 **LEXA:** ♥

The day flew by and Clarke wasn't sure that she actually heard or retained a single thing that was said in her classes. She would have to ask someone for the notes later to catch herself up, but she found it really hard to care because for once everything felt good and right in the world, and she planned to stay in her little bubble of happiness for as long as she could. 

That night they got taken out, as promised, and the group that gathered for dinner and drinks was bigger than Clarke had expected, but she didn't mind. She liked showing off her ring, even if some of the girls who saw it seemed to think it was strange that she wasn't disappointed by it. 

Gina came up and hugged her. "Congratulations," she said. "Did you know she was going to propose?"

"No," Clarke said. "I had no idea!"

"Were you planning to propose to her?"

"No..."

"Oh," Gina said. "I just noticed she was wearing a ring too."

"Oh." Clarke shook her head. "No. She got both." Gina's expression shifted just slightly – maybe it was just confusion, but maybe it was something else – and Clarke understood then why Lexa seemed just a little hesitant to show hers off, even though Clarke knew she was no less happy to be wearing it. It was probably a little awkward explaining she'd gotten herself a ring. "I told her once about how stupid I thought it was that guys were expected to get girls two rings. It didn't used to be that way, it's all just commercialist, capitalist bullshit, and I guess she remembered. So our engagement rings will be our wedding rings, too. And because the metal they're made out of is unique, she got them both made at the same time so they would match."

"That makes sense," Gina said, and now she was just smiling. "Maybe you can get them engraved inside for the actual wedding," she said. "Just so that there's something a little different when you give them back to each other."

"I like that," Clarke said. "I'll have to ask her if that's possible... if you can engrave meteorite metal..."

"Allegedly diamond is the hardest substance on earth, so I would assume you could with a diamond-tipped blade, but then if the metal isn't from earth..." Gina grinned. "I'm so happy for you."

"Thank you," Clarke said, hugging her. 

Gina squeezed her hand as she let her go... and then Clarke moved on to the next person who wanted to congratulate her.

By the time they got home, they were both exhausted. Ecstatic, but exhausted. By the end of the week, Clarke was more than happy to just curl up on the couch with Lexa after she got home from the Tae Kwon Do and have a little time just for them... because it was starting to feel like they might never get that again, with everyone wanting to know what their plans were already... as if they'd had a spare moment to make any.

And yet as soon as she'd been left to her own devices (literally, she'd curled up on the couch with her tablet) the first thing that she'd started to do was look at wedding things. She'd been scrolling through Pinterest when she'd seen a picture of a bride and groom standing in front of a castle... and she'd had an idea.

Lexa flopped down next to her, rubbing a towel over her damp hair and hooking her ankle around Clarke's, leaning in to her. Clarke tipped her screen so that Lexa couldn't see it. "So... I have a crazy proposal for you..." she said.

"Sorry, I beat you to it," Lexa said, grinning. 

Clarke rolled her eyes and swatted her arm lightly. "Not what I meant. But it _is_ about the wedding."

"What?" Lexa asked. 

"Well you remember how, way way back before the two of us were even the two of us? When you told me that there was a certain childhood rite of passage that you'd never actually had?"

She saw the corners of Lexa's mouth tip down. "Yes...?"

Clarke tipped back her screen to show it to her. It was open to the Disney weddings page, which Clarke had been scrolling through the last hour, and the more that she looked at, the more that she liked the idea, but she wasn't sure that Lexa would. "It's just a thought," she said. "I know that some people don't like doing destination weddings, because it forces everyone to travel, but..." She shrugged, searching Lexa's face.

Lexa took the tablet from her hands and tapped on the screen, scrolling through a few pages. "I'd actually been thinking about Hawaii," she admitted. 

"Oh," Clarke said. "We could—"

Lexa shook her head. "It's too far, and would cost too much for most people to be able to come." She tapped on the screen again. "This, though... this is good." She looked at Clarke and she saw that Lexa's smile had reached all the way to her eyes. "Yes," she said. "Let's do it."

"Okay," Clarke said. "I guess that means we should pick a date, because they—"

"June 24th," Lexa said before she could even finish. "We got engaged on yours. We'll get married on mine. That's eight months. That's long enough to plan a wedding, right?"

"I would assume so?" Clarke said. "I mean, I've never done it before."

"I should hope not!" Lexa laughed. "Or at least I would hope you would tell me if you had!"

Clarke rolled her eyes. "Are you sure?"

"That I would want to tell you if you'd been married before? Yes."

"No, you weirdo," Clarke said. "Are you sure you want it on your birthday?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "For the longest time we haven't had a date to celebrate as our anniversary, because where do we really count from? So I've decided we're just going to start putting things on dates that are already important so we'll have fewer to remember."

Clarke laughed. She wasn't sure that Lexa was completely serious about the reasoning, but she did seem to be sure of the fact that she wanted it to be on her birthday, and there was a sort of graceful symmetry to it, wasn't there? "Okay," she said. 

Lexa handed the tablet back but snuggled into Clarke's side so that they could both see the screen. "So how do we get started?"

"It looks like there's a form that we fill out," Clarke said, "and then we get contacted by one of their wedding coordinators and we go from there."

"Okay," Lexa said. "What do they need to know?"

Clarke couldn't help the thrill that went through her as she filled in her name, and then Lexa's in the form (although she did have to switch it from the default of 'Bride and Groom' to 'Bride and Bride' first, because there was no escaping the heteronormativity), but then they hit a stumbling block almost immediately.

"How many people are we inviting?" Clarke asked. "And then how many of them do we think will actually be able to come?"

Lexa began to tick people off on her fingers. "Anya, Raven, Octavia, Lincoln, your mom, Marcus, Veelu..." She stopped, and her smile disappeared. 

It wasn't hard to guess why. "Are you going to invite your father?" Clarke asked gently, putting down the tablet so that she could take Lexa's hands.

"I don't know," Lexa said. "I know that I should. But I also know that I shouldn't count on him to show up... and which is worse? To not even give him the chance, or to give him the chance and then have him let me down again?"

"I can't answer that for you," Clarke said. "Whatever you decide, though... I'm with you. Okay? I support you, and I'm not going to try to convince you to do something that you're not comfortable with. If you want to invite him, then I'm not going to try to tell you to save yourself the heartache. If you want to tell him to stick it where the sun don't shine, I'm not going to tell you that you should give him a chance. Other people might, and I'm sorry if they do, but not me. This is our wedding, and I want you to be happy."

Lexa put her head down on Clarke's shoulder, and Clarke could hear that her breath had gone ragged. She let her be, and a few minutes later she lifted her head, her eyes red-rimmed but dry. "Thank you," she whispered. 

"Of course," Clarke said. 

"We can count him for now," Lexa said. "They're just looking for an estimate, right?"

"Right."

Lexa nodded. "We'll just plan on him not showing up, even if I invite him." 

"What do you mean?"

"I mean no walking me down the aisle. If you want to do that with your mother, that's fine. I'll wait at the end like the groom usually does. No father-daughter dance. That kind of thing."

"Yeah," Clarke said, a lump forming in her throat as it suddenly struck her that yeah, if she wanted to do those things, they would be with her mother, because her father wouldn't be there. Her eyes filled with tears that she tried to scrub away. "Shit."

Lexa looked at her and her eyes went wide. "Oh Clarke! I'm sorry. I didn't even—"

"It's okay," Clarke said, and she meant it. At least in the sense that it wasn't Lexa's fault and she wasn't upset with her. It wasn't okay that her father wouldn't be here for her wedding, or her graduation, or any other milestone for the rest of her life. She'd thought she'd worked through all of that, come to terms with it, made peace with his death.

Apparently not.

Lexa pulled her into her arms and held her tight, and Clarke let her take comfort in what she _did_ have, which was a fiancée who loved her, who she loved, who was her anchor and her greatest joy. She had her mother, and her little sister – who would obviously have to be the flower girl – and a family of amazing friends that she never would have imagined. Her father wouldn't be there, but she was far from alone.

And now she had to figure out just how not alone she – they – would be.

She picked up the tablet again. "Okay," she said. "Where were we?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who may have missed it, I posted the story of how Raven and Anya ended up unofficially adopting a teenager. You can read it here: [Gonna Make This Place Your Home](http://archiveofourown.org/works/11502927).


	166. Lexa

Lexa picked up her phone to check the time and saw a text message from her father. She didn't even really need to read it to know what it said, and she hated that even now, even after years of having nothing to do with him, this still stung. She pushed herself back into the curve of Clarke's body, pulling her arms more tightly around her, and felt her stir, nuzzling her face into Lexa's shoulder blade before pressing a kiss to the back of her neck. 

"Good morning, Clarke," she whispered, trying to swallow the slight rasp in her voice. 

"Good morning, Lexa," Clarke whispered back, then tugged on her until she rolled over to face her. "Is it, though?"

Lexa brushed her lips over the lines that formed between Clarke's eyebrows when she frowned, trying to smooth them away. It _should_ be a good morning. They were graduating today, after four – or in her case five – years of classes and homework and papers and projects and headaches... but of course her father found a way to screw that up, because that's what he did. 

"He's not coming," she said. 

Clarke's eyes widened. "To the w—"

Lexa shook her head before Clarke could finish. "To graduation."

"Oh." If anything, Clarke looked relieved. They'd both been a little surprised when the RSVP for his wedding invitation had come back almost immediately, saying that he would be there. Lexa still didn't trust that something wouldn't come up, that a case wouldn't be more important than seeing his only child get married the only time she planned to. 

"I shouldn't be surprised," Lexa said. "And he said he's sorry." For whatever that was worth. Although she couldn't remember now if he'd ever explicitly said it, it was her father who had taught her not to apologize for something if you didn't mean it, because your words should always mean something, and if you said that you were sorry just to smooth the way, then you were compromising yourself and you weren't anything or anyone without integrity... or something like that. She had to assume that he hadn't always been able to practice what he preached; it didn't seem like it would be possible to ever rise through the ranks of the military without apologizing for things you weren't sorry for. But then maybe her father was just so fucking perfect he never made a mistake that he had to apologize for.

Except her. She was pretty sure if he was ever forced to answer what his biggest mistake, his biggest regret was, it would be her. Maybe how he'd failed to be a father to her, but more likely the fact that he'd ever had a kid in the first place.

"Lexa..." Clarke tugged on a strand of her hair gently. "Don't... wherever you're going, don't go there. Come back to me."

Lexa forced herself to focus on Clarke's face, on her eyes blue as a summer sky and the slight waves of her pale gold hair and the curve of her lips... 

She tried to remember what time it was, and what time they had to be at graduation. She had time to go for a run, or she had time to let herself be distracted, but not both. 

She chose Clarke, and the kind of comfort and solace that existed only in her arms. She let herself get lost in her, let herself surrender and forget everything but the press of hands and lips, the glide of skin on skin, the exquisite ache of wanting that gave way to the almost overwhelming pleasure of having, and the peace that came after.

"Do we really have to go?" she asked. 

Clarke laughed softly, a gust of breath that tickled her ear. "Yes," she said. "We have to go."

"But it's going to be boring," Lexa said. "A bunch of speeches from people we don't care about, saying the same trite, cliché crap that gets said at every graduation, a pep talk for the future that we're supposed to be grasping like the proverbial bull by the balls or whatever."

This time Clarke's laugh was not so soft. "I'm pretty sure that that's not how the saying goes."

"No?" Lexa blinked at her innocently, and Clarke rolled her eyes, and then rolled on top of her and pinned her down, straddling her hips. Lexa arched her back and pressed up against her and Clarke groaned. 

"We need to get up," she said.

"If I was that proverbial bull, I would be," Lexa said.

Clarke snorted. "I'm getting up now." But she didn't move... possibly because Lexa's hands were roving up her thighs to her hips, but who could really be sure? 

By the time they finally did get up, they weren't running late, exactly... but they didn't have any time to spare for delays. So of course Clarke's eyeshadow went missing and Lexa could only find one of her dress shoes and they managed to forget their caps and gowns until they were two blocks away so they had to turn around and go back, so they were only halfway to the hotel where Clarke's mom and Marcus were staying when Clarke got a text message asking where they were, because they were supposed to meet for breakfast before the ceremony (and they _needed_ to eat, because it was likely going to be two hours long, and outdoors, and low blood sugar and heat and a mass of humanity to contend with was a recipe for disaster). 

Luckily, they were able to be seated right away when they got to the restaurant. Lexa was surprised that the place wasn't packed, considering they couldn't possibly be the only family who wanted to get something to eat before graduation, but this place was a little more upscale so maybe that was it. At least it meant that the service was quick, which gained them back a little bit of the time that they'd lost. 

"We should have invited your father to join us," Marcus said. "I didn't even think of it."

Lexa nudged Clarke's knee under the table, trying to signal her to let her handle this and to not make it a bigger thing than it needed to be.

"It's fine," Lexa said, her voice even, if a little flat. "Something came up with work and he wasn't able to make it."

"I'm sorry," Marcus said. 

"It's fine," Lexa repeated, and she saw Marcus glance over at Abby and she wondered if maybe she had nudged him to shut him up about it. 

"Is the seating assigned?" Abby asked, "or is it first come, first served?"

"First come, first served," Clarke said. "So they recommend getting there early." She had the good grace to look a little sheepish but Lexa didn't bother. "I can tell you where everyone is meeting if you want to sit near people that you know. Anya and Lincoln and Octavia's mom and everyone."

"That would be great," Abby said. 

They finished their meal and Abby and Marcus headed for the stadium where the graduation was being held, and Clarke and Lexa went to the gathering places for the graduates. They were split up by the schools they belonged to, so they weren't going to be sitting anywhere near each other, and Lexa was incredibly tempted to just... not quite make it to where she was supposed to be getting ready. She still had her father's ticket; she could go sit in the stands and cheer for Clarke and Octavia when they walked across the stage. But Clarke would panic if they called Lexa's name and she didn't appear, or if they didn't call it at all, and she didn't want to do that to her. So she went and put on her cap and gown and filled out the little card with her name spelled out phonetically to make sure that it was pronounced correctly when she walked up (although messing up Lexa Woods would be a pretty spectacular feat), and got in line with everyone else.

As predicted, the ceremony was long and boring, and Lexa tuned out halfway through the first speech, instead trying to surreptitiously search the crowd, first the students for Clarke and Octavia, and then the people in the stands for Anya and Abby and the rest of her friends... who were really her family, more than her father ever had been or probably ever would be. 

Octavia was the first of their names to be called, and even though the audience had been asked to hold their applause until the end so that they didn't have to wait to call the next name, a piercing whistle split the air and Lexa knew that it was Lincoln who had done it. She saw Octavia grin and wave, and hold up the folder that her diploma would go in (when she got it in the mail weeks later...) triumphantly. Clarke was next (although there were plenty of names in between) and Lexa cheered, and when the kid sitting next to her gave her a funny look she said, "That's my fiancée." Which resulted in an even weirder look, and Lexa just rolled her eyes. 

And then she waited, and waited, and waited, and finally her row was motioned to head toward the front, and the climbed the steps at the edge of the stage and handed over her card for her name to be read.

"Lexa Woods," boomed through the stadium, and she heard cheers and looked up, and saw Clarke and Octavia waving. She smiled and walked off the other side of the stage, where she was supposed to go back to her own seat but she didn't. She'd only come for the people she loved; she didn't need a ceremony and a polyester gown to tell her what she'd accomplished. So she made her way over to where Clarke was sitting, thankfully near the end of a row, and Clarke shifted over to share her folding chair. The people around her adjusted to make room. "I wish I'd thought of that," one of them muttered. "This would be so much more fun if you could actually sit with your friends." 

"And here I thought we were getting along so well," Clarke joked, and the girl grinned at her. "Hey you," she whispered to Lexa. 

"Hey," Lexa whispered back. 

Finally they got the end of the line of graduates, and the ceremony finally ended, and they all stood up with a huge cheer... and although they were supposed to process out in an orderly fashion, it pretty quickly degenerated into chaos as everyone sought out their friends to hug them and congratulate them. Lexa kept hold of Clarke's hand so she wouldn't lose her in the crowd, and they managed to find Octavia fairly easily. She hooked her hand through Clarke's other arm, and they dodged their way through the mass of people until they were finally out and into air that was marginally cooler. 

Octavia started to strip off her gown, but Clarke stopped her. "My mom is going to want pictures," she said. "Sorry."

"Ugh," Octavia groaned, but she zipped back up. 

It took a little while, but they finally found their families, and there were lots of hugs and yes, plenty of pictures, but finally they were allowed to rid themselves of their heat-trapping prisons, and Lexa felt like she could breathe again. 

"We did it," Clarke said, twining her arms around Lexa's waist. "We made it."

Lexa got the feeling Clarke wasn't _just_ referring to school. "We did," she agreed. "We made it." She kissed her then, not caring who saw or what they thought about it, because damn it, they _had_ made it, and they had earned every bit of happiness that they could manage to grab.

* * *

A few weeks after graduation, Lexa found herself once again facing the end of something... which was just the beginning of something else, of course, because that was how things worked most of the time in life... but this time the 'graduation' was one that was much more personal. She had fought for it – not just metaphorically, but literally – and now she had to stand up and prove that she had earned it.

"Are you nervous?" Clarke asked.

"Are you?" Lexa countered.

"Of course I am," Clarke said. "I'm always nervous about these things."

"You've never actually seen me test," Lexa said.

"I've seen you when I went to watch Octavia test," Clarke said. "Is this going to be any different?"

"Yes," Lexa said. This time it would be different, because she was actually testing for rank. Third degree black belt, which she could possibly have tested for last year, but she'd chosen to hold off because some of the younger black belts, including Aden, were testing for their second degree, and she hadn't wanted to step on their moments of glory, so to speak. And maybe also a little bit because Octavia was testing for her black belt this cycle, and it had seemed right, somehow, that after everything they'd all been through together, that they would finish this together. So she'd focused on her teaching skills, and helping them get ready. But this time Master Gustus hadn't asked her if she was ready to test; he'd told her she was, and she hadn't argued. Why not graduate from college, test for rank, and get married all within a few weeks? 

Go big or go home, right?

"You don't have to come," Lexa said. "If it's going to freak you out, you don't—"

"Of course I'm coming," Clarke said. "This is important you to, so it's important to me. That's how this works. And I want to be there for O, too, even though she hates it when we show up to watch."

"Okay," Lexa said. "You can close your eyes at the scary parts if you need to."

Clarke laughed. "I just might."

Lexa made sure that she had the uniform that she only wore for testing and demonstrations with her, the one that was still pretty much pristine white, and the rest of the gear that she thought she might need. They didn't usually test sparring, because it took so much time to take the gear on and off, but she brought it anyway, just in case. She'd never actually seen anyone test for third degree before (Anya had gotten hers before Lexa met her) and she didn't really know what to expect.

And although she'd dodged the question when Clarke asked it, yes, she was nervous.

When they got to the dojang, Clarke went to find a seat, and Lexa went to change. Anya was already there, in uniform, and she nodded to her, trying, Lexa assumed, to silently reassure her that she was all right, that she had this. In the locker room, she reached over and squeezed Octavia's shoulder to do the same. Octavia nodded back, looking determined but slightly green.

She spent a few minutes stretching and warming up, and when they were called to line up, she took her place just behind Anya... until she was called to the front to lead the warm-up, and wasn't relieved of her position until they were done, and Master Gustus started testing them on skills – basic strikes, blocks, and kicks, and then combinations, and then they transitioned into self-defense, with people sitting down on the edges of the mat as the skills that were being tested got beyond the level that they knew, until it was just the black belts... and then just her and Anya. 

From unarmed self-defense they went into weapons defense, and Lexa tried to forget that there was anyone watching – and by anyone, she meant everyone, or at least it felt that way. 

So that they weren't sitting for too long, after weapons defense they went into forms, and Lexa had a moment of panic in the middle of the blue belt form as she nearly switched to high blue without realizing it. It was only a quick glance at everyone around her that kept her on track. It was a common mistake, and one that she'd made before, but she'd thought she would manage to avoid it. She just hoped that here bobble hadn't been too obvious.

After forms, they did some sparring without gear, so no contact... or for the higher ranked black belts, very light contact, because they were meant to have enough control to actually strike a person without hurting them (unless it was their intention to do so). And then they took out their short sticks, and then their long sticks, and although Anya knew all of the forms, too, Lexa was called out to perform them on her own. 

She swallowed, and breathed, and when told to begin, she moved. She didn't think, she just did it, letting hours of training take over because the moment she let herself think about it would be the moment she faltered. Don't think, just do.

And she got to the end and looked right at Master Gustus, and he gave her a nod, and she knew she'd done all right. 

After that, they were all back on their feet to finish up, and after they filed off the mats, Master Gustus motioned for her to stay behind. She accepted congratulations from the other students, who hugged her despite the fact that she warned them that she was sweaty and gross and not really fit to be touched. Luna was there, and Echo (who had probably come for Ontari even though she wasn't testing; she'd been asked to come help out because she was the right size and skill level to partner with Octavia, but maybe she'd come from Octavia, since they did live together), along with all of the usual suspects who came for Octavia. 

"You're amazing," Luna told her, hugging her tight. 

"You should come back," Lexa said. 

"Maybe," Luna said, but Lexa was pretty sure that it was the sort of maybe that was more of a no. 

When everyone but their group had left, Master Gustus called her and Octavia to the front. "Octavia, step forward," he said. "Remove belt."

She did as she was told, and then Master Gustus held out a black belt to Lexa, who took it and wrapped it around Octavia's waist and tied it, then bowed and shook her hand, and Octavia grinned, her fingers straying to the end of the belt that she'd worked so hard for.

"Lexa, step forward," Master Gustus said. "Remove belt."

Lexa did, and then watched as her instructor handed the belt that was embroidered with her name and three stripes to Anya. Anya looked at her, then tied the belt around her and shook her hand... and then pulled her into a hug and didn't let go for so long that everyone else seemed to take it as an invitation to join, and Lexa laughed as the forced of it nearly toppled her off her feet. 

Finally they let go, and she was left with only Clarke standing in front of her. "So did you see any of it?" she asked, teasing, "or did you have your eyes closed the entire time?"

"I watched," Clarke said. "You're still beautiful. Terrifying... but beautiful."

Lexa hugged her, and then kissed her softly. She would take that compliment any day.

"You two are so gross," Raven grumbled, but it was an old joke and Lexa knew she didn't mean it. 

"Can we get out of here?" Octavia asked. "Don't we have better things to do? Better places to be?"

"Yes we do," Anya said. "Let's go."

"Where?" Lexa asked. "What did you do?"

" _I_ didn't do anything," Anya said. "At least I wasn't the one who had the idea. Just come on. You won't hate it."

"Is there food involved?" Lexa asked.

"So much food," Anya said.

"Fine," Lexa said. "Lead the way."


	167. Clarke & Lexa

_**Clarke** _

Clarke settled into her seat beside Lexa, sorting through her electronics before fastening her seatbelt. It had been a while since she'd been on an airplane; the last time she'd flown anywhere her father had still been alive. She looked out the window at the men in orange vests (and maybe women, but it was pretty impossible to tell in the clothing they wore) loading luggage into the plane and doing she had no idea what else.

"It's not a long flight," Lexa said. "We'll be there before you know it."

"I know," Clarke said. "I just..." She looked over at Lexa and shrugged. "What if something goes wrong? What if our dresses get lost? What if—"

Lexa stopped her with a finger placed gently against her lips, just for a second. "Nothing is going to go wrong," she said. "I called the hotel yesterday and they're there and waiting for us. They've even had them steamed to make sure there's no wrinkles." They'd chosen to ship their dresses down to Florida rather than bringing them on the plane, because the postal service offered tracking and airlines not so much, and folding them up small enough to fit in a carry-on risked them being hopelessly wrinkled when they arrived. "We talked to the planner on Friday and she said that everything is done or almost done. There's nothing to worry about."

"You're not nervous at all?" Clarke asked. "Not even a little bit?"

Clarke caught the tiniest flicker in her expression, and she wished she could take the words back, because she knew that Lexa _was_ nervous, if only about one thing. The dresses, flowers, cake, and everything else would be there. They had confirmed it. But there was one wild card, one dark cloud that hung over everything: Captain Titus Woods, and whether he cared more about his job or his daughter. 

He'd said he was coming. He wouldn't dare not show up, would he? Would he really ruin what should be one of the happiest days of his daughter's life? Would he really leave her an orphan at her wedding?

Clarke took Lexa's hand and squeezed. "Nothing is going to go wrong," she said. 

Lexa nodded and leaned back in her seat, and soon they were taxiing down various strips of pavement until they hit the runway... and the plane sped up and everything got loud and suddenly the wheels lifted from the ground and they were pointing up, up, up and Clarke remembered all of a sudden that she hated flying. She _hated_ flying. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to keep her cursing quiet enough that it wouldn't be heard by everyone around them, and Lexa held her hand tight until finally the plane leveled out a little and Clarke's heart stopped pounding quite so hard. 

"It's okay," Lexa whispered, pressing her lips to the back of Clarke's hand. "You're safe."

Clarke had to brush away tears quickly, because she remembered the last time Lexa had said those words, and how that was probably the moment where she'd really started to fall in love with her, and now here they were, three and a half years later, on a plane to Disney World where tomorrow morning they would get married.

The rest of the flight went smoothly, and Clarke didn't panic nearly as much as they began their descent, but she was still incredibly glad when they were back on solid ground. They met up with everyone else who had been on the plane with them (some people had taken other flights, but they would all be arriving tonight at some point) and headed down to baggage claim. Most of them had managed to pack in carry-ons, but there were a few bigger bags that hadn't made the cut. Luckily, nothing got lost.

There was a shuttle they could take to Disney, but as they exited the baggage area, they saw a sign that said Woods-Griffin Wedding, and when they approached the man holding it he said that he was here to show them to their limousine, which would take them to their hotel. "We didn't...?" Clarke looked at Lexa, who shook her head. "We didn't ask for a limousine," Clarke said. 

"Consider it an upgrade, then," the man said, smiling. "Right this way." They went, and it turned out that there were actually two, enough to hold everyone that had come with them, and so they got to ride in style to the hotel where they would be staying. They had decided that they weren't going to go to the parks until after the wedding, although any of their friends that wanted to were free to do so. Instead, Clarke had booked them a couples' massage to help them relax after the flight, and then they would have a nice dinner with all of the members of the wedding party – a rehearsal dinner without the rehearsal, pretty much, and maybe, hopefully, get some sleep tonight.

They settled into their room, then headed down to the spa for their massage. By the time it was over, Clarke was feeling much better, much more herself... and although she was still nervous, she was mostly just excited. They explored the hotel a bit, since there were all kinds of walking paths, and Lexa took some pictures of the place for their eventual wedding album. When it was time for dinner, they met up with Abby and Marcus (Veelu would be having a less formal meal with Grammy Lou somewhere), Anya, Raven, Octavia, Lincoln, Aden and his mom... and Lexa's father.

Lexa stopped dead when she saw him, and Clarke had to tug on her hand gently to get her to start moving again. "I didn't think he would show up," she whispered. "I really didn't think he would show up."

Clarke had had her doubts as well, but she didn't say that. Instead, she just smiled and said, "I told you nothing was going to go wrong."

"Only after I told you first," Lexa said with a smile that seemed to shake off her shock. She nodded to her father, but didn't approach him to hug him or even to say hello, and Clarke guessed it was going to take more than just showing up for her to really let him back into her life. 

Conversation at dinner ended up being less about the wedding itself, and more about what everyone wanted to do at the parks. "We have to go to the Magic Kingdom first," Clarke said. "I know that it's probably the most boring park for adults, but we have to. It's the first time Lexa has ever been here. She has to have the whole moment of walking in and seeing the castle before anything else."

"It's my first time, too," Octavia said. 

"That's right!" Clarke said. "All the more reason. And there's some of the really iconic rides, like Space Mountain and Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Moun—wow, that's a lot of mountains for a place as flat as Florida, isn't it?" 

Everyone laughed. "Hey, I bet you could get some awesome pictures in front of the castle," Raven said. "Although you probably don't actually want to wear your dresses into the park."

"No," Clarke said. "Yes to the pictures, no to the dresses. I feel like that would be a little awkward getting on and off the rides." 

"I'm still surprised you decided to wear a dress," Octavia said to Lexa. "I thought for sure you were going to wear a tux or something."

Lexa rolled her eyes. "You people and your stereotypes," she said. "You've _seen_ me in a dress before. And makeup. And heels, even! I don't see how it's such a shock that I decided to wear a dress for my _wedding_."

"Because you hate shopping," Anya said. "Getting a tux is a lot easier than shopping for a wedding dress."

"Okay, there's that," Lexa said. 

"For the record, she didn't just get the first dress that she tried on," Anya said. "She tried on three." She grinned. "All of which looked amazing on her, of course, because look at her, but—"

"Careful, Anya," Octavia teased. "Raven might get jealous."

Raven snorted. "Because she's got eyes?"

Octavia laughed.

" _Anyway,_ " Anya continued. "You'll have to wait until tomorrow to see which one she picked."

Although they weren't keeping with all of the usual wedding traditions, they had decided that they wouldn't let each other see their dresses until the actual wedding. Once they got up in the morning, they would get ready in separate rooms, and not see each other again until Clarke walked down the aisle to where Lexa would be waiting. 

Unless now that Titus had actually showed up, they had a last minute change of plans. It probably wasn't too late to say that Lexa would walk down the aisle with her father after all, was it? Would she even want that? 

"She'll be beautiful no matter what she chose," Clarke said. "But hopefully not so beautiful that I'm rendered speechless." She glanced over at Lexa and winked, and Lexa smiled back. 

"You're not the one who has to talk first anyway," Lexa said. 

"True. Why do you get to go first again?" 

"Because I won the coin toss," Lexa said.

Raven gave them a sideways look. "Did you really decide by coin toss?"

Clarke looked at Lexa, who looked back at her. "I honestly don't remember," Clarke admitted. "There were definitely decisions that were made by flipping a coin or by eeny meeny miney mo when we liked both or all of the options and were being indecisive."

"It might have been rock, paper, scissors," Lexa said. 

"You two are either amazing liars or completely ridiculous," Octavia said. 

"Both," Lincoln said. "Both is good."

* * *

Clarke hadn't expected to sleep well that night, but it turned out that a day of travel and socializing was actually pretty exhausting, and she'd fallen asleep quickly (okay, the infusion of endorphins into her system as they took advantage of the giant bed in the suite they'd been given might have helped a little there...) and she'd slept soundly through the night. She woke up to Lexa smiling at her, pushed up on one elbow so that she could lean down for a kiss. "Good morning, Clarke," she murmured. 

"Good morning, Lexa," she whispered back. "My almost-wife."

"We need to get up soon," Lexa said. "Hair and makeup and everything else."

"Mmm," Clarke said, pulling her down to kiss her again. "In a minute."

But they didn't have enough time to really let themselves indulge in anything more than a few long, slow kisses before there was a knock at the door, and Lexa was taken away to the suite that Anya, Raven, Octavia and Lincoln were sharing to get ready there. Octavia and Raven stayed behind with her, and her mom joined them a few minutes later. 

"Clarke!" Veelu said, launching herself out of her mother's arms. Clarke caught her and balanced her on her hip. "You're getting _married_!" 

"I know!" Clarke said. "And you're going to make it all pretty for me with flower petals!"

"Yup!" Vera smiled proudly, then squirmed out of Clarke's arms to go see Auntie Octavia, who was one of her favorite people in the world for reasons that no one completely understood but that might have been akin to cats' affinity for attaching themselves to the people who are allergic. 

"I can't believe this is really happening," Abby said. "I would be lying if I said that I'd never imagined this day would come... but this wasn't quite how I imagined it.

"You probably imagined I would be marrying a boy," Clarke said. 

"Well yes," Abby admitted. "But even after you met Lexa... I wasn't thinking 9 am on a Monday morning at Disney."

"Don't forget the Hawaiian theme," Octavia said. 

"It seemed like a fair compromise, given the fact that Lexa was thinking of actually having the wedding there, before I brought up Disney," Clarke said. "Anyway, you know you love it."

"I actually do," Raven said. "No crazy bridesmaid dress in a color that looks good on no one, with ruffles and bows where ruffles and bows should never be." Instead, she, Anya, Lincoln and Aden had all opted for white pants and Hawaiian shirts that were blue with white flowers, and Octavia and Veelu would be wearing dresses in the same blue print. Octavia hadn't been entirely thrilled about it at first, but once she'd seen that they hadn't picked anything crazy, she'd agreed that it was actually kind of a cool idea. 

They trooped down to the hair salon that was in the hotel (because this was Disney and they had such things – give people everything they need on property and you get to keep all of their money) and were set up in chairs to have their hair and makeup done. She and her group got to go first because Lexa's, being only half female, would be quicker. Veelu sulked when she wasn't allowed to have make up, but a meltdown was averted when instead they put polish on her fingers and toes. 

Once they were done, they went back up to the suite to get dressed... and then it was down to get into a limo to the venue, and Clarke's nerves really started to kick in. 

Her mother reached over and took her hand, squeezing it gently. She looked at her, and Abby smiled. "Relax," she said. "Just think about Lexa. Everything else is just details, and we'll take care of them. Just thinking about your bride, waiting for you."

Clarke nodded, but it didn't actually make her feel any less nervous. She reached to fidget with the ring on her finger, but of course it wasn't there. She had taken it off a week ago so that Lexa could get it engraved (and she had done the same with Lexa's), and last night they had been handed over to Aden who was going to be their ringbearer even though he was far too old for the job. They had asked anyway, because Lexa had wanted him in the wedding party, wanted him to be part of this since he'd been such a big part of their lives over the last few years. He'd agreed because he wanted to make Lexa happy... and maybe a little bit because if need be he could help wrangle Veelu, who was actually the right age to be a flower girl and therefore also the right age to potentially go completely off script and need to be reined back in.

She barely got a chance to see how things were decorated before she was escorted into a room to wait.

* * *

_**Lexa** _

"You two didn't have to get up this early," Lexa said to Lincoln and Aden, who had accompanied Anya when she came to collect her to start getting ready. "It's not like you need to do the whole hair and makeup thing."

"Are you kidding me?" Lincoln asked. "Do you think I just roll out of bed looking like this?" He grinned, and Lexa managed a weak smile in response. "This is what we're here for," he said. "To be your... bridesmen? Is that a thing?"

"We've been sticking with 'attendants'," Lexa said. "Makes things simpler.   
"Well, whatever you want to call us, we're here for you," Lincoln said. 

"Thanks," Lexa said. She walked to the big picture window in the sitting room of the suite where Lincoln, Octavia, Anya and Raven were staying and stared out the window. If she positioned herself just right, she could see the giant golf ball (which was not actually a golf ball, but she'd forgotten the real name for it) in the distance. 

Anya came up beside her and wrapped her arm around her shoulders. "Talk to me," she said. "Because that is definitely not the face one would expect to see on someone who is about to marry the love of their life."

Lexa looked at her and sighed. "I wish we hadn't decided to get ready separately," she said. "I know I'm going to love finally getting to see her. I just keep thinking about how they're probably laughing and joking and having fun, and how Clarke gets to have this... to share this..." 

"With her mother," Anya finished for her. "And you don't."

"Yeah," Lexa said. "I'm still shocked he showed up, but even if he was here – which he's obviously not – it still wouldn't be the same. Most of the time I don't even really think about it. It happened so long ago; it's just been the way things are for most of my life. It's not... a thing." She shrugged. "I'm sure if he was here he would say how proud of me she'd be, how happy for me, all of that, but that's just... platitudes. That's just what you say because that's what's in the Dead Mother Wedding Day Handbook. It doesn't _mean_ anything. She wasn't there. She doesn't know me. She doesn't feel anything for or about me."

Anya's arm tightened around her shoulders, pulling her in, and Lexa found herself wrapped in a hug whether she wanted to be or not. After a few seconds Anya let go, but kept hold of her shoulders and waited for Lexa to meet her eyes. "I know it's not the same, Lexa, as having your mother here, or even your dad," she said softly. "But you've got me. I'm here, and I will always be here. And I am proud of you, and I am so, _so_ happy for you. You are so beautiful, and so strong, and you have come so far, and I am honored to be able to call you my friend, and to be here to share this day with you."

Lexa's eyes filled with tears, and she hugged Anya so hard that she made her stumble back half a step before she caught her balance. And then suddenly there were more arms around her as Lincoln announced, "Group hug!" and she didn't know what she'd done to deserve such good friends, but she was really fucking glad that she did.

"Time to head down to the salon," Anya said when the hug finally broke up. "Are you boys coming?"

"Think they'll give me a manicure?" Lincoln asked. "Emphasis on the man, obviously, because we are manly men doing manly things." He flexed, baring his teeth, and Anya threw a pillow at his head. 

"Better question," Anya said. "Should we _let_ them come?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "I want to see what a MAN-icure looks like."

"You're all crazy," Anya said, and led the way to the elevators to go down to the salon. 

When they got there, Lexa was surprised to find her father standing outside, looking slightly awkward. She approached him cautiously, bracing herself for him to tell her that something had come up and he had to go, even though the ceremony was in less than two hours, it just couldn't wait. 

"I have something I want to give you," he said. "I thought..." He stopped and just held out a small square box to her, the size that some kind of jewelry might come in. 

She took it and lifted the lid. Inside was a silver hair comb, filigree inlaid with little flecks of brilliant blue abalone. Her breath caught and her hands started to shake. "This was..."

"Your mother's," he said. "You gave it to her for Mother's Day one year. You saved up your allowance for weeks to buy it for her, and she—"

"Wore it all the time," Lexa said. "She said it was the best gift she'd ever been given, except—"

"For you," he finished. "She would want you to have it."

"Thank you," Lexa said. For a second, she thought he might try to hug her. For a second, she thought she might let him. But the moment passed, and Anya motioned for her to come in, because they were starting to run short on time. 

She went and sat down in a chair, and when the stylist saw what was in the box, his face split in an almost blinding smile. "Oh, I can work with that," he said. "You're going to be so beautiful, people won't know what hit 'em."

"Geez, Lexa," Aden said. "You're beating people up even on your wedding day?"

She swallowed a laugh and flipped him off, because he was old enough now that she could, then sat back in her chair and let the man work his magic.

Afterward they went back up to the suite to get dressed, and then it was down to the limousine that would take them to the venue. Her father rode with them, which meant that no one said much. When they got there they were taken to a room to wait, and the butterflies that had mostly been under control started to flap their wings in earnest as Lexa glimpsed the space that would soon be filling with their family and friends, and where she and Clarke would officially join their two lives into one. 

"You can go in," she said to her father. "Get a seat."

"You're not..." He didn't finish, but she saw the way his eyes flicked toward the chapel, and she could guess that the rest of the sentence was something along the lines of 'walking down the aisle'. As if she couldn't do it without him. As if, after every moment of her life that he'd missed, he had any right to share this one. 

"I am," she said. "Alone."

* * *

_**Clarke** _

Clarke could hear everyone talking quietly as they went into the chapel and found seats, and after what felt like a very long time and no time at all, the music they'd chosen for the processional began to play. She got up, trying not to crush the stems of her bouquet in a death grip, and waited for it to be her turn.

Lexa would go first, having decided to give people the opportunity to see her, Clarke guessed, or maybe because people would expect her to because that's what brides did, or maybe she wanted some semblance of that traditional moment, even if so little about them was traditional. She hadn't wanted to ask too many questions about the decisions that Lexa made that would normally have involved her father, because she didn't want to turn it into a bigger thing than it needed to be.

Clarke's stomach was in knots and heart was pounding so hard she was sure that everyone would be able to see it. Raven and Lincoln walked down the aisle together, following Anya (Lexa's Best Woman, a title she had chosen for herself instead of Maid of Honor) who Clarke hadn't seen, then Octavia followed them by herself. Her little sister headed down the aisle next, sprinkling flower petals as she walked, and Aden followed behind her. (Normally it would have been the other way around, but it would be easier to catch her from behind than in front, although really she'd been behaving very well. She'd even offered to go spy on Lexa's room so she could tell Clarke if Lexa looked like a princess or not, but Abby had stopped her.) 

She watched as they made their way down the aisle and took their places at the front... and then it was her turn. She'd made the decision that without her father there, she would go alone. She could have had her mother walk with her, but since Lexa was doing it alone, so would she. The whole 'giving the bride away' thing was so old-fashioned, anyway. She was her own person, and she wasn't being handed over like a piece of property from one owner to the next. Her vows even said so... and god, she hoped she would remember them when the time came.

She was about halfway down the aisle when she really got a look at Lexa... and she almost stumbled, but managed to make it look like an intentional pause before she continued walking. (At least she hoped it looked intentional.) Her mouth was suddenly dry and her eyes wet as she saw her standing there in her white dress, understated but elegant, with just a hint of sparkle, her hair pulled back on one side with a silver comb and the rest tumbled in loose curls over her shoulders. 

She saw Lexa's eyes go wide, and then her lips curved slowly into a smile that warmed the green until it was bright as fresh grass, and they faced each other for a moment before they each turned toward their one remaining parent. Titus stood, and then Abby, and they both approached the table that had been placed on the raised dais, where two candles sat: one for her father, and one for Lexa's mother, and with their parents they lit them so that maybe somehow some part of them would be there with them for this, and then Abby and Titus went back to their seats and it was just the two of them and the justice of the peace.

Clarke barely heard the words that were spoken, welcoming everyone and thanking them for coming, the usual stuff that led up to the part where they pledged themselves to each other. She barely even registered that there was anyone else there because her entire world was just Lexa. 

"They have chosen to write their own vows," the woman conducting the ceremony said. "Lexa?"

Lexa reached out and took Clarke's hands, looking down at them for a moment and then back up at Clarke. "I know we said we were going to write our own vows," she said, "but when I tried to find the right words... I couldn't. I felt like there are no words... that they haven't invented the words yet that can encompass how much you mean to me, that can quantify what we've been through getting here. I tried, and I failed, and I tried again... and I didn't fail better, no matter how many times I went back to it." The corner of her lips curved up into her signature half-smile, and part of Clarke melted.

"Luckily there are people in the world who are better with words than I am, and who are willing to put their words out there for the world. And one of them... a complete stranger... somehow managed to say for me the things that I didn't know how to say. So thank you to Clementine von Radics, whoever you are." 

She paused, swallowed, and then stepped a little closer, her voice dropping, but Clarke was sure it still carried.

"I am not the first person you loved.  
You are not the first person I looked at  
with a mouthful of forevers. We  
have both known loss like the sharp edges  
of a knife. We have both lived with lips  
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came  
unannounced in the middle of the night.  
Our love came when we’d given up  
on asking love to come. I think  
that has to be part  
of its miracle.

This is how we heal.  
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You  
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms  
will bandage and we will press promises  
between us like flowers in a book.  
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat  
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar  
of your nose. I will write a dictionary  
of all the words I have used trying  
to describe the way it feels to have finally,  
finally found you."

Her voice broke, and it was all Clarke could do not to pull her into her arms, to hold her because she didn't need to go on, wasn't sure if she could handle it if Lexa _did_ go on. But then Lexa collected herself and continued:

"And I will not be afraid  
of your scars.

I know sometimes  
it’s still hard to let me see you  
in all your cracked perfection,  
but please know:  
whether it’s the days you burn  
more brilliant than the sun  
or the nights you collapse into my lap  
your body broken into a thousand questions,  
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen."

She held out her hand, and Aden put Clarke's ring into it, and Clarke held out her trembling fingers so that Lexa could slide it back into its proper place as she said the last few words that would bind them to each other:

"I will love you when you are a still day.  
I will love you when you are a hurricane."


	168. Lexa & Clarke

_**Lexa** _

Lexa kissed Clarke's knuckles, then brushed the tears from the corners of her eyes, resting their foreheads against each other for a moment before Clarke nodded slightly as if to indicate that she was okay.

"Well now I feel better about the fact that I didn't actually write my own vows either," Clarke said, and Lexa almost laughed. "I tried. I swear I did. But I kept coming back to the vows that my Mom showed me, the ones that she and my dad used, which are apparently ancient and Irish, and... I think they say what I want to say better than I could actually say it, so..." She looked at Lexa, holding her hands, and smiled. 

"You cannot possess me for I belong to myself,  
But while we both wish it, I give you that which is mine to give.  
You cannot command me, for I am a free person,   
But I shall serve you in those ways you require,   
And the honeycomb will taste sweeter coming from my hand.   
I pledge to you that yours will be the name I cry aloud in the night,   
And the eyes into which I smile in the morning.   
I pledge to you the first bite from my meat,   
And the first drink from my cup.   
I pledge to you my living and dying, equally in your care,   
And tell no strangers our grievances.   
This is my wedding vow to you.   
This is a marriage of equals.  
And beyond this, I will cherish and honor you through this life, and into the next."

Lexa felt Clarke slide her ring back onto her finger, and then she held her hands tight, her jaw working as she tried to swallow the lump in her throat, because yes, those were the right words, those were the words that needed to be said, that they needed to hear, and she just wanted this to be over so she didn't have to stand still anymore, didn't have to hold herself apart from Clarke anymore...

"By the powers vested in me," the justice of the peace said, "I pronounce you legally wed. The brides may now kiss."

Their noses bumped in their haste to get to each other, and so their first kiss as wife and wife had a laugh caught in the middle of it, and then there was applause and Lexa finally really registered everyone that was here, everyone that had come to witness this and share it with them... and she choked up again and clung hard to Clarke's hand as they made their way back down the aisle, together this time and followed by their best friends, and they had both been right when they'd said that nothing was going to go wrong, because nothing in her life had ever, ever felt so right.

From the chapel where the ceremony had been held it was only a short walk to their reception venue. Since they'd decided that they were okay with having the wedding so early in the morning, the food would be a breakfast buffet, and now that she could feel anything other than butterflies, Lexa realized that she was starving. But first there were pictures to be taken, and she tried to be patient with the process because she knew that she would appreciate having all of the different shots later on, but she was glad when they were finally able to get to the food. 

"Look," she said, showing her plate to Clarke. "Waffles shaped like Mickey Mouse!"

Clarke laughed. "I know," she said. "I have them too." 

"Would it be completely ridiculous for me to tuck a napkin in the front of my dress to make sure that I don't get syrup on it?" Lexa asked. 

"Ridiculous? Yes," Clarke said. "Practical and a good idea? Also yes." 

They got some extra napkins so that they were fully protected from accidental drips, and then dug into their food, and even though Lexa knew that they were objectively nothing special and probably even a little on the dry side, she would swear that they were the best waffles she'd ever tasted. 

When everyone had had a chance to fill their plates at least once, the DJ announced that the brides would now share their first dance together. (They'd decided that given the early hour of the wedding and the fact that people knew that there would be food at the reception, it was likely that a lot of the guests would skip breakfast. It had seemed in everyone's best interests to get them fed and in a good mood before making them sit through people twirling around to sappy songs.)

Lexa got up and held out her hand to Clarke, who joined her on the little dance floor. The music started to play, and they swayed with each other, smiling and not caring how saccharine the lyrics were, because they were also true.

_I see the whole world in your eyes_   
_It's like I've known you all my life_   
_We just feel so right_   
_So I pour my heart into your hands_   
_It's like you really understand_   
_You love the way I am_

_And I hold my favorite thing_   
_I hold the happiness you bring_   
_But it feels like I've opened my eyes again_   
_And the colors are golden and bright again_   
_There's a song in my heart, I feel like I belong_   
_It's a better place since you came along_   
_It's a better place since you came along._

When they'd been planning, they thought they would leave it there, but what they'd found out was that weddings weren't entirely about the people getting married. Abby had been okay with the idea of not walking Clarke down the aisle, but she'd balked at there not being a father-daughter, or in this case mother-daughter, dance. Lexa knew that Clarke had tried to convince her mother that it wouldn't be fair when they weren't sure if Lexa's father would show up, but she'd finally relented when her mother had played the dead father card, saying that way back when she'd been a little girl, he'd already picked out the song that he would choose when the day came. 

So they got up next, and Lexa sat down and tried not to look at her father, who had said congratulations to them when they'd been taking pictures, but nothing more. Maybe he thought by giving her the hair comb, he'd discharged his duty as a father. Maybe him keeping his distance was partly her fault; she'd been the one to tell him that she didn't want him in her life anymore, and that if that ever changed, she would reach out to him. Maybe he was waiting for her to make the first move... or she guessed the next move... and maybe she would, but not right now. Especially not when she heard the words to the song that Abby... or apparently Jake... had chosen, and flinched.

_Nobody's gonna kill your dreams_   
_Or tell you how to live your life._   
_There'll always be people to make it hard for a while_   
_But you'll change their heads when they see you smile._   
_The times you were born in_   
_May not have been the best,_   
_But you can make the times to come_   
_Better than the rest,_   
_I know you will be honest_   
_If you can't always be kind,_   
_Oh, yes sweet darling,_   
_So glad you are a child of mine._

She didn't let herself dwell on it, though, because when it had become clear that Clarke was going to dance with her mother, Anya had stepped in and insisted that Lexa would have a dance too, and she didn't care if she had to be the one to dance with her herself.

And then it had become a whole thing, a whole crazy thing that Lexa never would have imagined herself doing, but she was doing it, and she smiled thinking about how surprised people were going to be. She got up and hugged Abby – her mother-in-law, and that would take some getting used to – as she went to sit down again, and watched as the wedding party moved into place along the edges of the dance floor, sitting as if nothing was going on...

Anya smiled as the opening notes of the song played, mouthing the words to Lexa as it started off slow, like wedding dance songs usually were... but then the beat got a little heavier as they went into the second verse. 

_Hope that you fall in love_   
_And it hurts so bad_   
_The only way you can know_   
_You gave it all you had_   
_And I hope that you don't suffer_   
_But take the pain_   
_Hope when the moment comes,_   
_You'll say..._

At that point Raven and Clarke got up, and Lincoln and Octavia and Aden and Luna, and they joined them on the dance floor... and if it was a small flash mob, it was still a flash mob, and they had all painstakingly learned the steps as the song shifted into the chorus.

_I, I, I_   
_I did it all_   
_I, I, I_   
_I did it all_   
_I owned every second that this world could give_   
_I saw so many places, the things that I did_   
_Yeah with every broken bone_   
_I swear I lived_

After the chorus, Clarke and Anya switched places, so that the actual couples were dancing with each other. (With the exception of Aden and Luna, of course, but Aden didn't have a significant other, and matching him with his wedding procession buddy had been out of the question.) 

They finished out the song, grinning and trying not laugh as people whooped and cheered and danced in their chairs. When it was over, they gathered into a group hug. "Thank you," Lexa said. "Thank you so much. That was amazing, and you're all amazing, and I love you. Thank you."

"Ugh," Raven said. "Here I was thinking I was going to make it through this without crying, and then you gotta go and be all sweet." 

Lexa laughed and nudged her with an elbow, and Raven retaliated with a light hip check, and they all had to move away from each other before it turned into a tussle. Clarke took Lexa's hand and kissed it... and then looked at her with wide eyes. "Wait," she said, and pulled off her ring.

"Oh yeah," Lexa breathed, and did the same. Because they'd each gotten the other's engraved with their initials and the date, but they'd also decided they would put something else in there, something meaningful that the other would always wear against their skin. 

Lexa rotated the ring until she could make out the words Clarke had chosen: _Promise me we'll be all right._

"Are you kidding me?" she asked, at the same time Clarke looked at her like she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. Because inside of Clarke's ring were a different six words from the same song: _Give me hope in the darkness._

"Maybe that should have been the song for our first dance," Lexa said. 

"I think that would have been a little bit of a downer for most people," Clarke said, even as she slid her ring back on and pulled Lexa into a kiss. "If there was ever any doubt..."

"There never was," Lexa said. "Not really."

* * *

_**Clarke** _

As soon as they stepped off the dance floor, Wells was waiting for her to pull her into a hug. She leaned into him, holding on tight. "I'm so glad you made it," she said. There had been some doubt about whether he would be able to, since the terms for universities in England were different than the ones in America, and he only just finished classes a couple of days before. He'd also accepted a job there, and he'd been worried that they would want him to start right away, but thankfully he'd been able to postpone his start date until next week, so he would be staying for a few days to enjoy Disney, which meant that they would have the chance to spend a little time together before he went back. Almost all of the guests were staying for at least a couple of days – it seemed silly to come all the way to Disney World and not make a vacation of it – so even if they only got to spend a few minutes saying hello and thank you for coming now, they would hopefully get the chance for a little more quality time later.

"So am I," Wells said, letting go of Clarke to hug Lexa, and then grinning at both of them. "That was amazing," he said. "And the wedding was beautiful. I'm so happy for both of you." If he minded that he hadn't been included in the wedding party, he didn't let on. Probably he understood, since his plans had come right down to the wire. Clarke was just glad that they'd found a way to include Luna in the wedding in some way; she knew that Lexa would have had her as one of her attendants in a heartbeat if there had been someone on Clarke's side to balance her out. 

"Thank you," Clarke said. "It turns out that my friends clean up pretty well." She grinned.

"And they're not bad dancers, either," Lexa said. 

"No they're not," Wells said. "Moves like Jagger and all that."

Clarke looked at him. "Really?"

He just grinned. "We can't all be as cool as you, Griffin," he said. "I should probably leave you to it. Looks like you've got a line forming." Clarke glanced past him and yes, it seemed that people were starting to pretty much queue up to get a chance to talk to the happy couple. 

"I'll see you later, right?" she asked. "I believe I still have revenge to exact on you on the Mad Tea Party." 

Lexa looked at her curiously. 

"One time our families came here together, and he spun us around on the teacups so fast that I almost threw up. I was so dizzy my dad had to carry me for like ten minutes before I could walk in a straight line again."

Lexa shook her head slightly. "Note to Self: Find Someone Else To Ride Teacups With."

"Spoilsport," Wells joked. "But I will definitely see you both later. Congratulations again."

After Wells walked away, Ontari came up and threw her arms around Lexa. "Holy shit that was the coolest thing," she said, then straightened up. "I mean, congratulations." She grinned. "Also, Echo cried."

"Echo did no such thing," Echo said, winking. "Echo merely commented – based on her observation of some of the other attendees – that it was a very good thing that waterproof mascara had been invented or we – they – might end up looking like a bunch of raccoons and pandas."

"Right," Ontari said. "We totally believe you."

Clarke laughed and hugged Echo. "I agree," she said quietly. "It's a really good thing waterproof mascara exists."

Echo smiled at her. "You both look stunning." 

"Thank you." 

They were followed by a steady stream of other well-wishers, and even though they'd made the guest list, Clarke still felt slightly stunned by the number of people they had in their lives, that they cared enough about to invite, and who cared about them enough to spend the money to make this kind of trip. There were some people they'd invited that they'd never expected would show up, like Anya's parents and Bellamy and Octavia's mom, but here they were (well, two out of Anya's three, and the third had wanted to come but couldn't get leave), looking like they were having a great time. There was Bellamy and Gina, slow dancing to a fast song, completely caught up in each other, and Master Gustus gently reminding Aden and Tris that martial arts did not belong on the dance floor... or anywhere at a wedding reception, no matter who stole the last Mickey Waffle from whom. Octavia and Lincoln's housemates John and Emori, who had apparently been surprised to be invited... or at least John was surprised, being a bit of an acquired taste. Niylah, who had somewhere along the line become part of their extended friend-family, and who always had a warm smile and a kind word for everyone. (How she and John could possibly be related no one had quite figured out.)

They were eventually called back to the dance floor for the bouquet toss as the DJ played 'Single Ladies'. 

"For the record, anyone who wishes to classify themselves as a single lady is welcome," Clarke said, and then laughed as Octavia tried to shove Lincoln into the crowd. They turned their backs and threw their bouquets over their shoulders, and then turned around to see where they'd ended up. Gina held one of them (and that actually seemed like a real possibility) and Tris held the other.

"D—Curse my cat-like reflexes," she said, laughing. She tried to hand the flowers off to Raven, who took a quick step back, and Anya shook her head and crossed her arms. Tris pouted at them, and finally gave the bunch of flowers to Veelu.

"Because I'm the flower girl!" Veelu said. 

"Exactly," Tris said, and picked her up and swung her around before setting her down again. 

They danced a little and talked a lot, and by the time they'd gotten to everyone, their allotted reception time was almost over. One of the last to come up to them was Grammy Lou, who had seemed to spend a lot of the reception helping her parents wrangle Vera. She beamed at them and hugged them both at once. "I told you you would be next," she said to Clarke. 

"Yes you did," Clarke said. "I'm glad you were right."

"I don't think I've ever seen a wedding so beautiful," she said. "Or heard vows more heartfelt."

Clarke swallowed and nodded, wanting to say something more significant than just 'thank you' but coming up with nothing. Grammy Lou didn't seem to notice, though. She just hugged them again and kissed their cheeks. "Time to go see a man about an elephant," she said. "And possibly some flying carpets."

* * *

_**Lexa** _

As people filed out, they had to pass by a table where their wedding favors were laid out – a pair of personalized Mickey Mouse ears for everyone. Lexa was happy to see that pretty much everyone immediately put them on and started snapping pictures and selfies. She would have to remember to ask people to send things to her so that she could include them in the wedding album. She didn't want to ever forget who had been here, and how happy they had all been over some silly mouse ears.

Finally, there were only a few people left... including her father. Lexa took a deep breath and steeled herself to face him. 

"Do you want me to come with you?" Clarke asked. 

"No," Lexa said. "It's all right." She went over to him, but made no move to hug him. "Thank you for coming," she said. 

"Thank you for inviting me," he said. "And for letting me be part of it."

She nodded, not sure what else to say.

"Your mother would have been so happy for you," he said, trotting out the expected platitude just like she'd predicted. "She really would have."

Lexa nodded again, glad, she guessed, that he thought so, but mostly hearing what he wasn't saying, which was, ' _I'm_ so happy for you.' But that was probably too much to ask, as far as expressions of emotion went. 

"I've got to head back," he said. "I hope that you enjoy the rest of your trip."

"Of course you do," she said. She didn't mean for the words to actually come out, but they did, and she couldn't take them back. "You never brought me here when I was a kid, and now we're here and you still can't stick around to share it with me." She sighed. Why had she expected anything different, even after all of these years of him letting her down? Why had she let herself get her hopes up just because he'd made one small gesture this morning? "Have a safe trip," she said. "Don't forget your ears."

She turned and left, and Clarke followed. She didn't turn around to look and see if he actually took the ears, because she didn't think that she could handle knowing whether he cared so little that he wouldn't even take a silly souvenir to remember this by.

They went back to the hotel to change, and Clarke wrapped her arms around Lexa and held her tight. "I'm sorry," she said. 

"You don't have anything to be sorry for," Lexa said, leaning into her and burying her face against her neck, breathing in the light scent of her body wash that clung to her skin. "I should have known... I shouldn't have expected anything different."

"He's your family, though," Clarke said. "He—"

"No," Lexa said. "He's not. My _family_ is here," she pulled Clarke closer, "and waiting downstairs for us to join them so that we can all go together to see a castle that is going to change my life, if the stories are to be believed." 

"It will," Clarke said. "It will make you believe in magic."

"Well then what are we waiting for?" Lexa asked. She changed into white shorts and the Hawaiian shirt that matched the ones that the rest of the wedding party were already wearing, and put on shoes that would be comfortable to walk in for the rest of the day. She pulled her hair back and braided it so that it wouldn't be on her neck, and topped it all off with a pair of Mickey Mouse bride ears. Clarke did the same, and they looked ridiculous and Lexa didn't care. Not even a little. She pulled her wife – her _wife_ – against her side and snapped a selfie, then grabbed her camera and they headed downstairs to join everyone else.

"It's official," Octavia announced on their way over. "Monorails are the coolest mode of transportation and I want to take one everywhere." 

Once they were off the magnetically levitating train, they headed for the front gates of the park, tapping their wristbands against the turnstile things, because all of their information was apparently embedded in them somehow (Lexa chose to ignore the slightly creepy big brother aspect of that in favor of appreciating the convenience) and then they were in. They took a few steps down Main Street, and finally the crowds shifted and Lexa saw it: Cinderella's Castle.

Maybe if she hadn't just gotten married, she would have been more awed. Maybe she would have stopped and stared like so many people around them. Maybe she would have immediately whipped out her camera to take a picture despite the fact that the angle wasn't great and there were way too many people whose heads would have been in the shot. But as beautiful and magical as it was... it didn't compare to the sight of Clarke walking down the aisle toward her, dressed in sparkling white and carrying a bouquet of flowers. It didn't compare to looking into her eyes and watching them fill with tears even as she smiled as Lexa spoke her vows. It didn't compare to the soul-deep feeling of _rightness_ when her ring was back on her finger where it belonged. 

If there was magic in the world, it was in all of that, not in a castle that was mostly façade. It was in the feeling that she got as she watched her friends, her family, jostle against each other, laughing and teasing and telling each other, 'Look, look at that, look over here!' And okay, maybe it was a little bit in the look in Veelu's eyes when _she_ saw the castle, because to her there was probably a real princess living inside, and maybe, if she was very lucky and very good, she would get to meet her. 

Clarke looked at her and smiled. "Welcome to the happiest place on earth."

And it was, because she was here with Clarke, who had kept her promise to bring her here one day. Just like Lexa planned to keep every promise she'd made, yesterday and today and every day for the rest of their lives.

Together.

She pressed her lips to Clarke's cheek and whispered, "I love you."

Clarke – her wife, Clarke – looked at her and smiled. "I love you too. Now let's get on with the happily ever after, shall we?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering, the three wedding songs are:
> 
> [Rachel Platten - Better Place](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50gPTzjhmhA)
> 
> [Carole King - Child of Mine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reh6KKEV4Z0)
> 
> [One Republic - I Lived](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KINfQbfZwik)


	169. Clarke

Lexa reached up to smooth her finger over the spot between Clarke's eyebrows that always crinkled up when she was frowning. "Do you need dessert?" she asked. 

Clarke smiled and took her hand, kissing the tip of her finger, then leaning in to kiss the tip of her nose. "I'm okay," she said, because she knew the question was really, 'What's wrong?' Because when Stitch was troubled, he needed dessert, and it made her smile a little that she knew that – not the quote from the movie, but the motivation behind the seemingly out of nowhere question. 

But she guessed that was what happened when you were in a relationship with someone for going on four years, living together for more than two of them, and married to them for six months tomorrow. That made her smile more, and Lexa smiled in return. "That's more like it," she said. "But I still think you need dessert."

"Are you making it?" Clarke asked

"I can," Lexa said. "We have those microwave cake things."

"Not the mug ones," Clarke said, grimacing.

"No, not the mug cakes that were a complete disaster. The ones from the store."

"Okay," Clarke said, but then didn't let Lexa go when she moved to get up. She just scrunched farther down on the couch until she was more or less underneath her wife, and slid her hands into her hair, pulling her down to kiss her. Maybe it wasn't fair to avoid talking to her by occupying her mouth with other things, but really there was nothing to talk about, and maybe if she could just make her mind stop spinning itself in circles for a few minutes it would finally give up and accept that.

It didn't even take a minute for Lexa to give up on going to the refrigerator, and it didn't take much longer than a minute to coax her out of her shirt and bra, and the couch really wasn't the best or most comfortable place for this, but having to worry about not falling off was something else to focus on, wasn't it? Something to occupy the back of her mind while the front of it was completely occupied with what she was doing to Lexa, and what Lexa was doing to her... or maybe it was the front of the mind focused on the former and the back on the latter, she didn't know... didn't need to know because she wasn't in med school, except she _did_ need to know because as a physical therapist you worked with people who had had traumatic brain injuries and knowing where the injury was and what that part of the brain did could help with—

"Clarke," Lexa said, her fingers digging slightly into Clarke's hip. She didn't sound angry, only concerned. 

Clarke tried to burrow her hand under the waistband of Lexa's leggings, tried to distract her, but Lexa pulled away, sat up. "No," she said. "Not while you're like this. Not while you're not even here." So maybe a little angry, or disappointed. 

She sat up too. "Can we still have cake?"

Lexa looked at her for a long moment, then nodded and got up, grabbing her shirt from the floor and slipping it back on. She came back a few minutes later with two bowls, a little molten chocolate cake in each of them, surrounded by whipped cream. Clarke dug her spoon into it, breaking off a chunk of cake and scooping up some of the fudge sauce and cream, letting the flavors and textures melt over her tongue. 

"It's the little girl, isn't it?" Lexa asked. "The one you were working with this semester."

"Yeah," Clarke admitted, because what would be the point in trying to deny it? Lexa could read her like a book. And maybe she _should_ talk about it, so that someone else could convince her of what she couldn't convince herself: she couldn't get involved.

It was one of the first and most important things that they taught you when you started working: You can't get too attached to your patients. She'd done several internships while she was in undergrad, and she'd thought that she had it under control. She'd thought that it wouldn't be a problem. She'd had patients – clients, whatever you wanted to call them – that she liked, and ones that she didn't like as much. She'd had ones that she was really rooting for and hoping they would succeed, and ones where it was just a job to give them exercises to do and hope that they did them. But she'd never really brought that home with her. She'd never not been able to stop thinking about them at the end of the day... or week... or semester.

One of the things that she liked about the program that she'd chosen was that it was very hands on. They had you doing internships, working alongside physical therapists in different settings, from your very first semester. She'd been excited to get assigned to a hospital because it wasn't an environment that she'd worked in before, and she'd liked the people that she was working with from the start. They were patient with her, great at explaining things, gave her good feedback... there was nothing about the job she didn't love.

Then, about a month ago, one of the therapists she worked with got assigned to a little girl who'd been in a serious car accident and ended up with a traumatic brain injury. She'd been in a medically induced coma while the swelling in her brain went down, and the doctors hadn't known what her prognosis looked like. When they finally eased up on the drugs so that she could wake up, she was disoriented and agitated at first, until they got the levels of her pain meds right, and then pretty quickly she'd started to come back to herself. It was clear almost right away that whatever damage might have been done to her brain, it hadn't affected her cognitively. She was smart, and her biggest frustration at first had seemed to be the fact that sometimes she couldn't find the right word, because it was clear that she was used to being very articulate. When that subsided, though, it looked like everything was going to be fine.

Until they started working with her in PT. She had had some injuries to her body, but they were healing well. The trouble was, or appeared to be, that her brain was having a hard time getting signals to her limbs to make them do what she wanted them to. Not every signal – she wasn't paralyzed or anything – and not all of the time. But enough of the signals, enough of the time, that the doctors were concerned that it might not just the result of the residual swelling, and even if she _did_ fully recover, it was going to take longer than they had originally expected given her initial almost miraculous progress.

And of course, all of this was compounded by the fact that the girl didn't have anyone there cheering her on. She didn't have any family there at her bedside to tell her that she was going to be okay, that they loved her and they couldn't wait for her to come home. The car that she'd been in had been her foster mother's, and although her injuries had been less severe, and she'd been released from the hospital with just a cast on her arm and some stitches in her forehead after 48 hours of observation (they had been concerned about concussion and internal injuries), she hadn't been back. She and her husband had decided that they weren't in a position to be responsible a child with special needs, and that the little girl would be better off with a family who was equipped to handle that kind of thing.

And maybe it was a good thing that they acknowledged that, rather than taking her back and then deciding they couldn't handle it and putting her back into the system after giving the girl hope that things would go back to normal. Because Clarke was pretty sure that before the accident the foster parents had been thinking about adopting her. But how could you do that? How could you just decide that because a kid wasn't perfect anymore that you... what? Didn't want them? What if they _had_ adopted her and then this happened? What would they have done then?

All of this spilled out, and Lexa just sat there and listened, and whatever she was feeling she kept off her face, because when Clarke looked at her, it was carefully neutral. "And all I can think," she said finally, "all I can think about is that this little girl is going to be sitting in a hospital bed all by herself on _Christmas_. I assume that people donate toys for kids in hospitals, that maybe they'll have a Christmas tree in the playroom, maybe some trays of cheap store-bought cookies... but at the end of the day, she's going to be alone. And she's going to know it."

Lexa put her bowl down and shifted closer to Clarke, laying her hand on her knee. "So we'll go," she said. "We'll bring her Christmas."

Clarke shook her head. "I can't!" she said. "We're not supposed to – we're not _allowed_ – to get involved with our patients like that. If I did... I don't know what the consequences would be."

Lexa nodded, and Clarke assumed that would be the end of the conversation. But then Lexa looked at her again with that look on her face that she got when she was trying to work something out... or plotting something. "Don't you change your internship every semester?" she asked. "Won't you do a rotation or whatever you call it somewhere else when classes start up again?"

"Yes," Clarke said. "For the first two years you do different internships every semester, and then in the last year you choose what area you really want to focus on and you pick one for the entire year."

"So this semester is over, right? Meaning this internship is over."

"Yes," she said again. 

"Meaning that she's not technically your patient anymore."

"Maybe not technically, but they –" meaning the faculty at her school and possibly the staff at the hospital, "—probably still wouldn't approve."

"They might not," Lexa said. "But you're not actually breaking any rules, are you? Is there anything that says that you can't get involved with a patient when they're no longer your patient?"

"I think it would be a fairly gray area," Clarke said.

"There's lots of wiggle room in gray areas," Lexa said, a smile creeping onto her face. "Trust your law student wife on this one." Clarke frowned, but she didn't try to argue with her. "Which is worse? Doing something good for a little girl who might otherwise spend the holidays lonely, even though doing it might fall into an ethical gray area, or torturing yourself over the fact that you're not doing anything for said little girl because it might possibly maybe cause a few eyebrows to be raised? It's not like you're talking about shacking up with a former patient. It's bringing a few Christmas presents to a kid in a hospital. Anyone who has a problem with that is as empathically bankrupt as the Grinch."

Clarke pulled her in and kissed her. "Have I told you lately that I love you?" she asked, then groaned. "Don't you dare start singing!"

"Why not?" Lexa asked. "You fill my heart with gladness! Take away all my sadness! Ease my—" 

Clarke stopped her with a kiss, and this time she didn't let her mind wander... only her hands. 

When they were dressed again, Lexa looked at the clock. "If we're going to do any shopping, we should probably do it now. Tomorrow will be a nightmare, but maybe this late most people will have shopped themselves out and we'll stand a chance at being able to get around the mall without feeling like we're cattle being herded through chutes."

"Are you sure?" Clarke asked. 

"About this probably being the best time to go to the mall? Yes."

"About all of this."

"Yes," Lexa said. "Come on. It's time to make Christmas happen for... what's her name?"

"Madi," Clarke said. "Her name is Madi." 

"Okay. It's time to go make sure that Madi doesn't get left off of Santa's list this year."

The mall was busier than they had hoped, but not as busy as Clarke feared, and they were lucky enough to get a parking space that someone was pulling out of that wasn't half a mile away from the door. "What does she like?" Lexa asked. 

"She likes to read," Clarke said. " _Loves_ to read. She likes animals, and watching movies... of course that might just be because there's not a lot else to do when you're stuck in a hospital bed." 

"Does she have a favorite?"

"I'm not sure. I think she likes most Disney movies." 

"Okay," Lexa said, and they headed for the Disney store. They looked around, picking out a few things, and then Lexa stopped in front of the display of stuffed animals. She picked up a stuffed Stitch and hugged it, then put it back down again. "Do we know how she feels about Monsters Inc?" she asked. 

"She likes it," Clarke said.

"Okay," Lexa said, picking up a big fluffy blue Sully and tucking it under her arm. "Are we ready?"

"I think so," Clarke said, and they went to check out. They headed for the bookstore, where they asked one of the harried looking workers if they had any recommendations for voracious young readers who liked animals. They got a few suggestions, and Clarke just hoped that they weren't ones that Madi had already read. 

"One more stop," Lexa said, heading for one of the department stores. 

"What do we need there?" Clarke asked.

"Pajamas," Lexa said. "Right? Every year on Christmas you get pajamas."

"Right," Clarke said, her voice thick. How the hell had she gotten so lucky? 

They found the children's section and looked at the racks of pajamas. "Do we know what size she is?" Lexa asked. 

"No," Clarke admitted. "Maybe... around the size of that girl there?" There was a bored-looking girl following her mom as they walked past that looked like she was maybe built a little more solid than Madi, but not enough that it would make a difference for something like pajamas. 

"Excuse me, ma'am?" Lexa said, approaching the woman. "I'm sorry to bother you, and I know this sounds crazy, but what size is your daughter? For pajamas. We're trying to buy some for my niece and I forgot to ask what size she is now and her mom is probably already asleep."

The woman smiled at her. "She's a medium," she said. "Good luck!"

"Thank you!" Lexa said brightly. "Happy holidays!"

"You too!" the woman said, and continued on her way.

"You just totally lied to that woman," Clarke said. "You never lie!"

Lexa cocked an eyebrow. "I never said that. I've always said that I don't say things that I don't mean. I never said that I always tell the truth. Would you rather have tried to explain the whole story to a complete stranger?"

"No," Clarke admitted. 

"Well then." They found some pajamas that were probably meant to be for boys, but they had cute little monsters on them and Lexa decided that she liked them better than all of the kittens and unicorns that were supposed to be for girls, and Clarke thought Madi probably would too (not that she wouldn't like kittens and unicorns, but monsters seemed a little more her style). So they bought them, and headed back to the car.

The next day they drove out to see her mother and Marcus and Vera. She didn't mention Madi to her mom, afraid of how she would react to her wading into that gray area so early in her career, and Lexa followed her lead and didn't say anything either. They decided not to spend the night, even though they were invited to, and even though it was late by the time they left, preferring to spend the night in their own bed.

They woke up late the next morning and had a lazy breakfast together, spending a little while snuggling and unwrapping the few gifts that they'd gotten for each other. They could have made a big deal out of their first Christmas together, but the end of the semester had been so hectic they just hadn't had the energy to make much of a fuss. They were going over to Anya's later, where there would be way too many people in too small a space, for food and games, and that was good enough for them.

First, though, they headed to the hospital. One of the nurses smiled when she saw Clarke, even though she looked a little confused. "What are you doing here?" she asked. She saw the bags that they carried. "Visiting someone?"

"Madi," Clarke said, trying to sound like it was no big deal.

The nurse nodded, and maybe she understood, because all she said was, "She's in her room."

Clarke headed for it, knocking on the door even though it was open. Madi looked over and when she saw Clarke her entire face lit up, and she pushed herself to sitting, looking like she was ready to hop right out of the bed – which she wasn't supposed to do without someone there because she was a fall risk. One of the bracelets around her skinny wrist said so. "Clarke!" she said, but then her expression went suspicious. "There's no PT today," she said. "They said there's no PT today, because it's Christmas."

"I'm not here for PT," Clarke. "I thought you might like to have some visitors. There's someone I want you to meet." 

Madi looked past her and saw Lexa standing there. "Is that Lexa?" Madi asked, turning back to Clarke for a second, but she didn't wait for an answer. "Are you Lexa?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "You must be Madi."

"Clarke told me about you," Madi said. "One time. I saw your picture on her phone and she said that you're her wife. Even though she's young and most people don't get married when they're so young anymore. Not like back in the olden days when you got married early because probably you would die early, although average lifespan numbers for back then are skewed because so many kids died when they were just babies or really young."

Clarke could see that Lexa was suppressing a laugh. "That's a very interesting fact," she said. "Clarke told me about you, too. She said that you like books and movies and animals."

"That's true," Madi said. "I like all of those things."

"We brought you a few presents," Clarke said, suddenly feeling a little awkward about it. She didn't want Madi to think that they were just doing it out of pity... although she guessed that was probably part of it. How could you not feel bad for a kid who had to know that every other kid who was stuck here had family visiting and bringing them things? Mostly, though, she just wanted to give the girl a chance to have something resembling a normal holiday when she was living in very not-normal circumstances. 

"You didn't have to do that," Madi said. "My case worker came and gave me some." She pointed to the end of the bed, where here were a couple of pictures books that were far too easy for Madi, a puzzle, a coloring book and some crayons. Not bad gifts, but they were so generic they could have been for any kid... and they probably had been donations for any kid.

"Well if you really don't want them..." Clarke teased, but handed the gift bag over to Madi anyway, and watched as she tore into it, squealing with delight over everything she pulled out. 

"Oh, I love this book!" Madi said about one of them. "I've read it like five times, but that was at my old house and I don't have it anymore, so thank you!" The others she gave no indication that she'd read before, but Clarke had no doubt that by the end of the week she would have finished all of them. 

When she got to the second bag, Clarke said, "Lexa picked those out for you." 

Madi beamed at Lexa and reached into the bag, and her delighted cry of, "KITTY!" when she pulled Sully out of the bag told them that Lexa had chosen well. She hugged it tight to her chest, then tucked it beside her in her bed and pulled out the pajamas. "Ooooh!" she said. "These are awesome! Can I put them on right now?"

"We'll have to call the nurse," Clarke said. "You can't—"

"You can make sure I don't fall," Madi said. "Come on, please?"

Clarke shook her head. "We can't break any of the rules."

Madi heaved a sigh and pushed the button to summon the nurse, who came and supervised while she changed out of the pajamas she was wearing into the new monster ones, then curled back up in bed with Sully cradled in her arms. "This is the best Christmas ever," she said. "The only thing that would make it better was food that didn't stink." She looked over at Lexa. "Literally. It stinks." She wrinkled her nose.

Lexa laughed. "I can't help you out with dinner," she said, "but these might make a better dessert than pudding or Jell-O." She handed Madi a plastic container filled with cookies that they'd been given by Anya. Clarke had agreed that they could sacrifice them, since they could just get more tonight. 

Madi tried, and failed, to pull open the container, and Clarke could see the frustration in her eyes. She was going to encourage her to try again, but Lexa reached out and took it, and made a big show of prying up one corner like it was really stuck before handing it back to Madi, who managed to get it open the rest of the way. "Oooh, the peanut butter ones with the Hershey's kisses are my favorites," she said. "Can I have one before dinner?"

"I don't see why not," Clarke said, and then looked at Lexa and mouthed, 'Thank you.'

Lexa just shrugged, and took a cookie when Madi insisted. They stayed for most of the afternoon, until they were risking being late getting to Anya's (where Lexa was still expected to be present to help set up, despite the fact that she no longer lived there). 

Madi reached out her arms and Clarke hugged her tight. "Merry Christmas," she said. 

"Merry Christmas," Madi said, and Clarke could hear the sadness in her voice even though she was obviously trying to put on a brave face. Then she held out her arms to Lexa.

Lexa held on to her for a long time, and when she let her go, she tucked Sully against her and handed her one of her books. "He told me he wants to read this one first," she said. "But you'll have to help him with the big words."

"He knows how to read!" Madi said. "He went to _university_ , remember?"

"Maybe he just looked at the pictures," Lexa said. 

Madi rolled her eyes, but Clarke could see she was trying not to smile. They headed for the door, but just before Clarke stepped into the hallway she asked, "Will you come back? Even though you're not going to be working here anymore?"

"We'll come back," Lexa said. "Promise."

Clarke nodded. "Merry Christmas," she said again, and they headed back toward the car. "You shouldn't have promised her that," she said when they were far enough away that there was no way Madi could hear.

"Were you not planning on coming back?" Lexa asked. 

"I was, but... it's not good to get her hopes up," Clarke said. "Eventually she'll be discharged, and—"

"Eventually isn't tomorrow," Lexa said. "Let's just worry about one day at a time."

"Okay," Clarke said, but was it? She had a sinking feeling that this gray area had just gotten a whole lot grayer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who is interested in their adventures at Disney, I wrote it as a separate piece, which you can read here: [The Happiest Place on Earth](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11649852).


	170. Lexa

Lexa let them into the front door (Anya had never asked for the key back) and leaned down to untie her boots, sliding them off before going inside. It had been a quiet ride over, and she couldn't tell if Clarke was upset or just pensive... but she could say the same thing about herself, so maybe that was all right. It was something they would have to deal with later, anyway, because right now they had to put on their best happy holiday faces.

"Hey you," Anya said as she came into the kitchen, pausing what she was doing to give her a hug. "We missed you last night." Her smile faltered. "What's wrong?"

Apparently she hadn't gotten her mask in place fast enough. "Nothing that I'm ready to talk about," Lexa said, because that was the most honest answer that she had. 

"Nothing with Clarke?" Anya looked genuinely worried. 

"I don't know," Lexa said. "Not... nothing serious." She scrubbed at her face with one hand. "I don't know, Anya. Didn't I just say that it was nothing I was ready to talk about?"

Anya held up her hands. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"What can I do to help?" Lexa asked. 

"There's veggies cut up in the fridge. If you can put them out on that tray there, that would be great."

"Got it." Lexa went to the refrigerator and got out the containers of carrot sticks and cucumbers and broccoli and all of the usual crudité platter suspects except celery, because celery was gross. She tried to arrange them in some kind of pattern just to make it look pretty, but it didn't really work out very well. When that was done, she found the cheese and crackers and put those out as well, since people were starting to arrive. There would be a big meal, but not until a little later, and it was nice to have snacks out for people who hadn't been eating all day.

Or who were just hungry all the time these days, Lexa thought, as Gina and Bellamy came in, with Gina preceded by her stomach by a pretty wide margin. She'd found out she was pregnant just before the wedding, but had waited to tell everyone (including Bellamy, who she hadn't trusted to keep it a secret) until afterward because she hadn't wanted to steal any of the spotlight. She was due pretty much any day now, and according to Octavia she was so ready to be done, she was ready to try just about every old wives' tale for inducing labor that she could find.

"I am glad that I didn't actually have her today, though," Gina said as she put some veggies and dip on a plate. "I would hate for her to have to share her birthday with Jesus. That's a pretty tough act to follow." 

Lexa snorted. She wasn't sure if Gina was religious or if she was just making a joke. She tried to just act normal around her, but sometimes it was hard, knowing that there was an actual person growing inside of her. The idea hadn't become any less unsettling to her in the years since it had been Clarke's mom who was pregnant, and the idea that this might happen more and more often with people that she knew... "If it makes you feel any better, I'm pretty sure that they've figured out that based on the astronomical phenomenon that would have led to the Star of Bethlehem, or just where the constellations would be – something to do with stars, anyway – that Jesus wasn't actually born on December 25 at all. Sometime in September, I think was the conclusion."

Gina laughed. "I think I read that somewhere, but it might have been on the internet, so you know how that goes."

"If you read it on the internet, then it's absolutely 100% true facts," Tris said, edging by to grab a handful of crackers and some slices of cheese. "And you should absolutely use it as a source on a research paper without checking it first. A-plus-plus never fails." 

"Plate," Anya said, handing her one. "You were not raised in a barn."

"Moo," Tris said.

"More like hee-haw," Raven called from the couch.

Tris clutched her chest, nearly dropping her crackers in the process. " _Excuse_ me," she said. "Are you implying that I am an ass?"

"'I see their knavery: this is to make an ass of me; to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir..." Octavia announced, having just arrived for the tail end of the conversation. 

"What is that?" Clarke asked.

"Shakespeare!" Octavia said. "A Midsummer Night's Dream. Did you not read _anything_ assigned to you in high school?" She grinned and hugged Clarke, then came over and nudged her shoulder against Lexa's before hugging her soon-to-be sister-in-law and putting a hand on her stomach to pat her soon-to-be niece (although the two things would be happening in the opposite order, because Gina wanted to have a proper wedding and there hadn't been time to plan one before the baby arrived). 

Lexa slipped away as the conversation turned to the baby, trying to find somewhere where she would be out of the flow of traffic. It wasn't that she wanted to disappear, exactly... except maybe she kind of did. It felt a little like the time that she'd come home to find the house full of strangers, except she didn't live here anymore, and she was supposed to be past all of that. Right? She should be able to handle this. She knew these people, cared about these people...

Tris plopped down at her feet, leaning back against her knee to prop herself up. She grinned up at her, and Lexa wondered not for the first time if all teenagers were like this – where seventeen actually meant flip-flopping at a sometimes alarming rate between being seven and twenty-seven. She didn't think it happened with Aden as much, but then he had always seemed mature for his age... and she also didn't see what he was like at home, really. Maybe Tris acted like this – like an adult one minute and a child the next – because she knew that she could. This was her home, and she could be herself in it, without having to worry about impressing anyone, or just not pissing them off. 

"Hey kid," Lexa said, tugging a strand of her hair. "Merry Christmas."

"It is," Tris said. 

"Good," Lexa said. She watched as people came in and greeted each other, and tried to focus on what people were saying, but her mind kept drifting back to the hospital, to Madi who was probably alone right now... maybe reading or maybe watching a movie, maybe asleep although she was pretty sure it was early for that, even for a kid. She was glad when dinner was served, because it gave her something to focus on, and then there were games afterward that took them well past midnight before people started to drift toward the door. She and Clarke stayed to help clean up, but Anya finally shooed them out, saying they would do the rest in the morning and they should go get some sleep.

They drove home in silence, the radio the only sound, and when they got home they headed for bed, undressing and collapsing into the sheets. Lexa wasn't sure which of them reached for the other, or if they both reached at the same time, and it didn't really matter, did it? Only that they ended up in each other's arms, pressed tight against each other as their lips met, and they were both too tired to be anything but slow and soft, but slow and soft was what Lexa needed so it was all right, and she felt Clarke's lips on her clavicle after, knew without hearing that they shaped the words, 'Good night, Lexa,' because they still said it, every night without fail, even now. She barely managed to mumble good night back before sleep dragged her down.

They went back to the hospital the next day. Clarke didn't look sure that it was a good idea, and Lexa knew that it probably wasn't, but they went anyway, because they were both afraid – Clarke didn't have to say it for Lexa to know that she felt it too – that if they didn't, they would let Madi down, and she'd been let down enough lately, hadn't she?

She didn't smile when they came in this time, though. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously at Clarke. "I don't care what you say. I'm not doing the stupid exercises and you can't make me. It's still the holidays! It's Boxing Day, which is a holiday in England, so I'm taking the day off!"

Lexa looked at Clarke, raising her eyebrows, and Clarke just rolled her eyes, suppressing a smile. "I didn't come to make you do your exercises," she said. "So you don't have to worry about that. Why don't you tell me what books you read instead?"

"I only read one," Madi said. "I want to make them last because I don't know when I'll get more." But she told Clarke about it, and Clarke asked her questions and Lexa watched them and kept her hands tightly clenched to keep from rubbing at her chest to try and ease the ache there. 

"I'll be right back," Clarke said. "Too much coffee." 

Madi grinned, and watched as she left, then looked at Lexa. "You're quiet," she said. 

"Usually," Lexa agreed. 

"Why?"

"I like listening," Lexa said. "I talk when I have something to say."

Madi nodded. "I probably talk too much," she said. "That's what one of the kids in the activity room said. I talk too much and I'm a know-it-all and nobody likes a know-it-all, but I said that Hermione is a know-it-all and Harry and Ron like her. Well, most of the time." 

Lexa smiled. "'You could have been killed,'" she said. "'Or worse, expelled!"

Madi gave her a shifty-eyed look. "'She _needs_ to sort out her priorities!'" 

Lexa held out her hand for a high-five, and Madi reached to give her one, nearly toppling over in the process. Her face creased with frustration as she pushed herself upright again, and she grabbed Sully and clutched him against her chest, burying her face against his fur.

"So what are these exercises that you're taking a holiday from?" Lexa asked after a minute. "I wonder if they're like the ones that I do."

Madi peeked out from behind her stuffie and considered Lexa... and then her eyes narrowed again. "You're trying to trick me into doing them even though I don't want to," she said. 

Lexa held up her hands in surrender. "You caught me!" she said. "Why don't you like them?"

"Because they're boring," Madi said. "Or too hard, and then I get mad because even if I _want_ to do them, sometimes I can't because my body doesn't want to talk to my brain. Or my brain doesn't want to talk to talk to my body, I guess. Like I know it should be easy but it's just _not_ and it makes me _angry_."

"What do you do when you're angry?" Lexa asked. 

Madi shrugged. "Nothing, really. There's nothing that I _can_ do. I'm not supposed to yell or throw things, no matter how much I want to. Even if I'm not yelling _at_ anyone, just because I might disturb other people."

"I used to get angry too," Lexa told her, "when I was around your age."

"I'm eight and one-third," Madi said. "Two days ago."

"Hmm," Lexa said. "I think I was probably closer to eight and two-thirds."

"Why were you angry?" Madi asked. 

"Because my mom died, and my dad made me move away from the only home I'd ever known and left me to stay with my grandparents, and I didn't know if he was coming back and I didn't understand why any of it was happening to me, and it just made me really angry," Lexa said. 

The little girl was watching her intently now, and Lexa wondered if she should have kept her mouth shut, because would telling her any of this – all of this – really help? But she had an idea that might help with the exercises _and_ the anger, if she could get Madi to buy in. "What did you do?" she asked finally. "When you got mad?"

"Nothing, at first," Lexa said. "I just kept bottling it up and bottling it up, until one day someone said something that I didn't like and I just exploded at them... and I got in big trouble. When my dad came back, he decided that I needed to do something with all of the feelings I was having. So he got me enrolled in Tae Kwon Do, where I got to hit things without getting in trouble." 

"Sometimes I hit my pillow," Madi said. 

"Does that help?" Lexa asked.

"Sometimes."

"What if Clarke and I talk to your physical therapist and ask them if it's okay if I bring in some gloves and mitts so that you can hit something other than just your pillow. Do you think you might like that?"

"Maybe," Madi said, but it was the kind of maybe that was really a yes that you didn't want to get too hopeful about.

"Okay," Lexa said. "We'll talk to them today, and if they say it's okay, I'll bring them in tomorrow. Sound good?" Madi nodded. "Good."

When Lexa looked up, Clarke was in the doorway. She wasn't sure how much of the conversation she'd heard, but she nodded at Lexa's unspoken question, and after spending a little more time with Madi, they went to find her physical therapist, who didn't look altogether pleased – or surprised – to see Clarke. 

Clarke explained Lexa's idea. "I know it's not really part of the plan that you'd worked out for her, but... maybe it's worth trying?" 

"I don't know," she said. "It might be more than she can handle right now. We don't want to push her too hard and have her get hurt, or get frustrated because she's not getting it right and then refuse to do the things that she's supposed to."

"She's already refusing," Clarke pointed out. 

"And she's already frustrated," Lexa added. "She's mad at her body because it doesn't work the way she wants it to. The way it used to. I'm not an expert in your field, and I will defer to you because you have been working with her for weeks and you know her condition better than I do, but I _do_ work with kids at the dojang who have anger issues, and I work with kids who are all over the charts when it comes to coordination and mobility. We've got kids who pick things up in an instant, and we have kids who work their butts off for three months and just barely manage to get their form down for testing. I don't know PT, but I do know Tae Kwon Do, and I do know at least something about kids."

The therapist – her name was Kelly – looked at her, and finally nodded. "Just be prepared to modify things for her," she said. "Some days are better than others."

"Of course," Lexa said. 

"Okay then," Kelly said. "It's worth a shot."

Lexa borrowed some kid-sized gloves (she decided on the purple ones, not sure what Madi's favorite color was) and a set of the mitts the instructors used for the students to punch, and they went back again the next day. Madi didn't put up a fuss when it was time to go to the PT gym, and even insisted that she could walk there herself (but Lexa noticed that both the nurse escorting them and Clarke kept a close eye on her).

"Stretches first," Kelly told Madi. 

"Okay," Madi said with a long-suffering sigh, and sat down on a mat. Lexa sat with her, following along with her as she stretched, and Clarke came up where Madi couldn't see her and gave Lexa a thumbs up. Lexa wasn't sure why, exactly, but figured maybe her getting down and doing it too was having a sort of positive peer pressure effect; Madi was working harder because she wanted to show Lexa how good she could do.

After her stretches, Kelly had her do a few other exercises, then said, "Are you ready to try something new?"

"Is it hitting things?" Madi asked.

"Yes," Lexa said. "It's hitting things."

"Then I'm ready!" 

"Give me your hands," Lexa said, and helped her put on the gloves, fastening the Velcro around her wrists. She put the mitts on her own hands, holding out the second one to Clarke to tighten rather than using her teeth. She held them up. "First, I'm going to have you do a fighting stance. You're going to put your left leg in the back and turn just a little to the side." She demonstrated, and Madi did as she showed her. "Good! Now when I say one, you're going to hit this target," she wiggled her right hand, "with your right fist. That's a jab. Ready?"

Madi nodded, her eyebrows coming down in a look of fierce concentration. 

"Okay. One!" Madi jabbed. There wasn't a lot of power behind it, but she also didn't throw her weight so far forward that she lost her balance, which some kids did, so that was a good start. "That was great!" she said. "One!" Madi jabbed again, and this time there was a little more power behind it. "Awesome," Lexa said. "Now for two, you're going to jab with your right hand, and then you're going to punch this target," she wiggled the left, "with your left hand. That's a double punch. Wanna try?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Two!" 

The double punch was slow and a little awkward, but not bad for a first try, and after a few more, she was starting to get the hang of it. Lexa started to mix up the numbers, and then she had her switch her stance, and they kept that up for about five minutes before she could see that Madi's arms were getting tired. Which wasn't really surprising, given the fact that she'd never done it before, the gloves added weight to her hands, and although she hadn't been pushing her hard, Lexa also hadn't been going easy on her. She'd treated her like she was any other new student, not like she was an invalid who might break if she asked too much of her.

She took off the mitts, then helped Madi out of the gloves. "How was that?" she asked, squeezing her hands as she checked her knuckles to make sure they hadn't been rubbed raw. Luckily, they looked fine. 

"Awesome!" Madi said. "I want to do that every day!"

Lexa smiled. "You'll have to talk to Kelly about that," she said. "You're still going to have to do your other exercises, and I don't want you to get too tired for those. But you did such a good job." 

Madi beamed, and Lexa reached out to squeeze her shoulder gently, like she might have with Aden or any of the other students who had worked extra hard. She stepped aside as Kelly finished working with Madi, and then they said goodbye to her before the nurse led her back to her room.

"How was that?" Lexa asked. "It wasn't too much, was it?"

Kelly shook her head. "No. I would have stopped you if I thought it was. She actually did really well. Better than I expected. Balance has been an issue sometimes but she seemed really steady on her feet."

Lexa nodded her agreement. "She did better than a lot of beginners I've worked with," she said. "There's a tendency for people to want to hit really hard, and they'll just throw their entire bodies into it, and they end up losing their balance."

"That's what I was worried about," Kelly said. "But she did all right. I think that's something that we can incorporate a little more of, if it gets her motivated."

"I'll be happy to show you a few things so you can work with her on it when I'm not here," Lexa said. 

"That would be great."

So Lexa showed Kelly a few more combinations that she could teach Madi, and left the gear behind (she'd gotten Master Gustus' permission to lend it temporarily if things went well) for them to use. As they headed back to the car, Clarke slid her arm around Lexa's waist. "For all that you claim that kids drive you crazy, you're really good with her," she said. "And that was harder than I've seen her work since her progress kind of plateaued. So thank you for that."

Lexa shrugged, putting her arm around Clarke in return. "If it helps her..." she said, not really sure where she was going with that thought. "I'm glad I could help," she finished lamely. 

They ended up going back every day that week, and Kelly let her keep working with Madi on different combinations. She didn't have the balance yet to do any kind of kicking, but she learned different punches and even some blocks and dodges readily enough that they didn't get bored. On New Year's Eve they went back with her to her room after to put up some decorations to help brighten the place up for the New Year.

"Hey," Lexa said. "I have an idea."

"What?" Madi asked.

Lexa held up some shiny ribbon. "I could braid this into your hair if you wanted," she said. 

"Really?"

"Sure," Lexa said. She arranged Madi on the edge of the bed and sat down beside her, carefully brushing out her hair (which was a little bit tangled from so much laying on it) and then parted it down the middle, using some barrettes to secure the ribbons at the top before French braiding them in, tying them in bows at the end. "There you go," she said, flipping them over Madi's shoulders so she could see. 

"That's so cool!" Madi said. "Thank you!" She threw her arms around Lexa and held on tight, but the angle was awkward so Lexa just pulled her into her lap and held her there, burying her face against the little girl's head with her eyes squeezed closed until she got her breathing back under control. 

"It's too bad that you don't get to make wishes for New Year's like you do for birthdays," Madi said. 

"Why?" Clarke asked. "What would you wish for?"

"I can't tell you," Madi said, "or it won't come true."

"Okay," Clarke said. She came over and hugged Madi, shifting her off Lexa's lap so that she could get up. "Happy New Year, kiddo."

"Happy New Year," she said... but she didn't sound very much like she meant it.

They went to the party at Lincoln and Octavia's house, but the entire time Lexa felt a complete disconnect from everything going on around her, and every time Echo offered her a drink she took it so by the time they got to midnight she was pretty well drunk. Drunker than she'd been in years. She'd thought it might help dampen the thoughts crashing around in her head, but it didn't. She leaned against Clarke as they counted down, and kissed her amidst shouts of "Happy New Year!" and told herself that everything was okay.

They took Lyft home and crashed into bed, and into each other, but for the first time in a long time... maybe ever... it felt like they didn't quite fit. Like their bodies had developed edges and angles that rubbed against each other in the wrong way, like two puzzles pieces that almost but didn't quite click. Clarke whispered good night into her shoulder blade, and she whispered it back with her lips pressed to the knuckles of Clarke's hand that she had to think about not holding too hard. 

And sleep didn't come. She was exhausted, and somewhere between still drunk and already regretting every drop, and endorphins made her limbs heavy even though the rush of her climax had felt distant and dulled... but still sleep didn't come.

She drank some water, got up to pee, went back to bed... repeated. Finally, sometime after 3:27 am which was the last time she'd let herself look at her phone, she rolled over and shook Clarke gently, nuzzling her nose and kissing her until she woke up, blue eyes silver in the almost-dark. 

"What's wrong?" she asked, one hand between them coming to rest over Lexa's pounding heart. 

Lexa took a breath and finally said the words that she'd been biting back since Christmas. "Tell me what we need to do."


	171. Clarke

For a second Clarke thought that she was dreaming, or that Lexa was, even though her eyes were wide open. She shifted her hand from Lexa's chest to her cheek and then her forehead, checking her for a fever like her mother always did even when she was complaining about something that wasn't even remotely like a fever. Her face was warm, but not overly so, and she wasn't pale or clammy. She let her hand fall back to Lexa's heart. "Tell you what we need to do for – about – what?"

"Madi," Lexa said. "Tell me what we need to do to bring her home."

Clarke blinked, sure now that she had to be dreaming. But she wasn't. She knew she wasn't. Which meant that Lexa was obviously still drunk... or maybe she'd consumed something other than alcohol at the party... but no, she wouldn't have done that. There was no way she would have done that; she kept herself under far too tight a rein for that.

"I'll go get you some water," she said, "and then we'll go back to sleep."

"No," Lexa said, wrapping her fingers around Clarke's wrist to keep her where she was. "I can't sleep. I tried. I've just been laying here, and no matter how hard I try, I just keep coming back to the same thing."

Clarke looked at her – really looked at her – and saw that she was serious. This wasn't a joke and it wasn't a game. It also wasn't possible... was it? "Okay," she said. "Okay. But I'm still getting you water, and I'm making myself coffee."

Lexa nodded and let go of her wrist, and they both got up, pulling on pajamas before heading into the kitchen. Lexa got her own water while Clarke started a pot of coffee, and once it had brewed they sat down on the couch. Clarke drew her knees up and perched her mug on one of them, and Lexa sat cross-legged beside her, turned to face her as much as she could. 

When she felt like she'd had enough caffeine that her synapses were firing again, Clarke let her legs slip down so that she could see Lexa's face better. "I heard what you said," she told her, "but... you'll have to forgive me for being really confused right now."

"I know," Lexa said. "Believe me."

"Then why—" But that wasn't the right question. That wasn't what she wanted, or needed, to be asking. "You said that you didn't want kids. Ever."

"I know," Lexa repeated. "And some of that hasn't changed. I still wouldn't want a baby. The idea of being pregnant, or of you being pregnant, still gives me the heebie-jeebies. The idea of you carrying a baby that wasn't – couldn't be – entirely ours..." She shivered. "None of that has changed even a little bit. But we also said that if, somewhere down the line, we felt differently, that we would talk about it again. So... here we are. Talking about it." She smiled crookedly. "And once again I forgot to make sure you had coffee beforehand."

Clarke couldn't help her own soft laugh. "I've got it now," she said. "So then... if all of those things are the same, what changed?"

"I did," Lexa said. "When I said all of that – and felt it, and meant it – I wasn't the same person that I am now. We had only been together, only known each other, for a couple of months at that point. I was imagining a future that I was afraid – was maybe even still at least a little bit convinced – that I would never get to have." She stared down into her cup of water as she rolled it between her hands like she might find the right words floating there. Finally she looked back at Clarke. "That was before Aden, or at least before he really became a big part of our lives. That was before Tris, and Ontari... Before Luna came back into my life, which I never thought would happen. Before Wells came back into yours, and you told me – you _taught_ me – that love multiplies. That loving one person doesn't take away from the love that you have for any other person. That when you're building a family one plus one plus one is a whole lot more than three. That was before I asked you to marry me and before you said yes, before..." She looked up, blinking hard, and Clarke saw her throat working. 

She set her coffee down and reached out, putting one hand on Lexa's wrist and the other on her knee. "It's okay," she said softly. 

Lexa nodded, but it was another minute before she could say anything. "That was before you introduced me to an eight-year-old girl who lost everything she knew all at once, and who doesn't know where home is anymore." 

_Oh._

Somehow it hadn't even occurred to her. Somehow, it hadn't clicked until now. 

Lexa looked at Madi and saw her eight-year-old self.

And she wasn't wrong.

Madi even looked a little bit like Lexa, when she thought about it. Dark-haired and green-eyed, although in both cases Madi was a little darker than Lexa, whose hair streaked gold when she got enough sun, and whose eyes sometimes shifted color until they were almost blue or gray. But the resemblance was there, and it made Clarke wonder if that had played some part in why she'd been immediately drawn to the girl.

"Eight and one-third," Clarke said softly. 

"Two days ago," Lexa said, smiling a little... but then her forehead furrowed and she looked away for a second. When she looked back she had a strange expression on her face. "She said that the day after Christmas. So she was eight and one-third on Christmas Eve. Which makes her birthday August 24."

"Okay..." Clarke wasn't sure if she just hadn't had enough caffeine or if she was really missing out on the significance of the date.

"It's halfway between my birthday and yours," Lexa said. "Exactly."

"Oh." 

Lexa didn't believe in signs, and Clarke didn't either, necessarily... but it seemed like the universe was trying really hard to convince them that they should. And it wasn't trying to be subtle about it.

"This is a big decision," Clarke said. "We need to make it with our heads, not just our hearts, because it's not just our hearts that are on the line." She didn't really need to tell Lexa that; Lexa knew better than she did, better than she ever could, what it was like to be so young and to feel so alone in the world. But it didn't have to be that way for Madi. She didn't have to grow up like that.

"'And I'll be bold as well as strong, and use my head alongside my heart,'" Lexa replied, and Clarke knew that she was quoting something but she couldn't quite place it. "I know this is big, and I know we have to be careful. I know that it might not work. But I also know that we would never forgive ourselves if we didn't at least try. So tell me what we need to do."

"I don't—" Clarke started, but Lexa stopped her with a shake of her head.

"Don't tell me you don't know," she said. "Because I know you, Clarke Griffin. I know that you looked it up. I know that your head – and your heart – have already gone down this path, and even though you knew you shouldn't, you looked anyway. Just to see."

She was right. Of course she was right. Because she _did_ know her. Better than anyone. Better than Clarke knew herself, sometimes. 

"I know that if it wasn't already in your head, you never would have let me meet her," Lexa said. "You never would have brought her up at all. Not that I think you were trying to manipulate me; I don't. I think when you told me about her, you might have even thought that you were trying to get me to talk you out of it. To tell you that you shouldn't, that you can't. But really... maybe not consciously, but what you really wanted was my permission, or my approval. You wanted me to be the one to say, 'No, Clarke, we have to.' And I did, because we did. We did then, and we do now."

Clarke just looked at her for a long time. It would be a cliché to say that she was looking at her like she didn't recognize her, like she was wondering who this person was and what she had done with her wife. It would be a cliché, and it would also be a lie. This was Lexa. This was the girl who cared so much about everything and everyone that she would bleed herself dry, give every last drop if it would save those she cared about, and wouldn't think twice about it.

And still she asked – she had to ask – "Are you sure?"

Lexa's expression softened into one that was, more than anything, a sort of wry amusement. "Clarke, what have I told you since the very first time we spoke? What have I said over and over again?"

"You don't say things you don't mean," Clarke answered. 

"Exactly."

"Okay," Clarke said. "Okay." She got up and got her laptop, bringing it back and powering it on. Lexa picked up the mug of coffee and took it to the kitchen, adding more so it was full again, and its contents warm. They settled in next to each other, and Clarke went to the folder of bookmarks that she'd created for the pages that she knew she shouldn't be looking at and opened them all, one after the other, and put the laptop between them so that they could both read.

It was around dawn that they dozed off, the laptop set aside and their bodies pressed against and around each other in a position that probably should have been uncomfortable but wasn't. Clarke woke a few hours later with her mouth sticky and tasting awful, and she could only imagine how bad her breath must be, but Lexa kissed her anyway as she stirred and blinked awake. "Good morning, Clarke," she murmured, nuzzling her face into Clarke's neck.

"Good morning, Lexa," Clarke whispered back. She pushed her hair back out of her face, and they slowly detangled themselves, sitting up and stretching. Clarke heard her phone buzzing back in the bedroom and went to retrieve it, flopping down onto the couch again as she checked her messages.

"Oh," she said. "Gina had the baby."

"When?" Lexa asked.

Clarke checked the time of the text. "About an hour ago. Persephone Laurel Blake, 7 pounds, 9 ounces, 20 inches." The phone buzzed again and a picture popped up of Gina holding a tiny blanket wrapped bundle. She looked exhausted but happy, and the baby... looked like a baby, with a shock of dark hair and a scrunched up red face. She turned the phone to show Lexa... whose face scrunched up not unlike baby Persephone's. 

"Does this mean we have to go visit?" Lexa asked. 

"Not right away," Clarke said. "I'm sure she'd appreciate some time to rest. But we'll probably be going to the hospital anyway...?" It wasn't really a question, though. Of course they would be going to the hospital. They had their own little girl—

She stopped the thought before she could complete it, because it was dangerous to let herself think that way. It was far from a sure thing... and really, if they were being completely honest with themselves, it was a longshot. But Lexa was right. They had to try. She reached over and squeezed Lexa's hand, and Lexa squeezed back.

"We can't tell her," Lexa said softly. "Not until we know more."

"I know," Clarke said. "We can't get her hopes up."

"And there's nothing we can do today," Lexa said, a statement that held the faintest hint of hope that maybe Clarke would tell her otherwise. 

"It's a holiday," Clarke said. "But we'll call her case worker first thing tomorrow."

They eventually got up and made breakfast – or brunch, given the hour – and then lazed around for a while in their pajamas until Clarke's phone started buzzing with texts from Octavia of the baby, and then from Lincoln of Octavia and the baby. 

Lexa snorted, and Clarke looked over. "What?"

"Lincoln," she said.

"What, the picture?" Clarke asked. It didn't seem particularly funny to her. 

"No, what he said," Lexa replied. 

"He didn't say anything," Clarke said. 

"Oh." Lexa bit her lip. "Never mind then."

"Don't you dare." Clarke leaned over to try and look at Lexa's phone, but Lexa leaned away, holding it out so she couldn't reach it. "You can't tell me something's funny and then not tell me what it is!"

"I thought he sent the same thing to both of us," Lexa said. "Apparently not."

"Come on..." Clarke wheedled. 

"If he wanted you to know, he would have said it to you, too," Lexa said. "He probably thinks you'll tell Octavia, and I'm not sure he's actually joking." 

Clarke frowned slightly. "I won't tell Octavia," she said, but then realized that that wasn't necessarily true. "Unless it's something that I think she needs to know."

Lexa bit her lip, then sighed. "He just said, 'If she says she wants one, there's going to be a Lincoln-shaped hole in the door.' But there's a winky-face, so he's probably joking."

"They're way too young to—" Clarke started, then stopped herself as Lexa looked over at her with raised brows. Clarke had the grace to smile sheepishly. "It's different?"

"It _is_ different," Lexa said. "But you know that that's what everyone is going to say to us, right?"

"I know," Clarke said. She wasn't sure that they would be wrong in saying it, either, under ordinary circumstances. But this situation was far from ordinary, and they would have to find a way to overcome every objection that anyone might have, because now that they'd decided, she wasn't going to accept any other outcome. 

"We should probably get dressed and head over there," Lexa said. 

Clarke texted Octavia quickly to ask if Gina was up for more visitors, and Octavia texted back a minute later that Gina said sure, as long as they didn't mind that she looked a mess. Clarke texted back for Octavia to tell her that she had just squeezed another human being out of her body, and no one had any right to judge her if she didn't look like a cover model at the moment... and they were photoshopped anyway. Octavia replied to just come and tell her herself.

"She can eat regular food, right? She didn't have surgery, so there wouldn't be any rules about not being able to eat, would there?" Lexa asked as they got in her car. 

"No," Clarke said. "Why?"

"Well, given the reports we've had on the quality of hospital food, I thought maybe it would be nice to bring her something actually edible," Lexa said.

Clarke grinned. "Anya has trained you well. When in doubt, feed people."

"There are worse habits to have," Lexa pointed out.

"That's true." Clarke tapped on the app on her phone that would order food ahead at an Italian place that they knew Gina liked, and they stopped by to pick it up, along with food for Bellamy and Madi since they weren't free to leave the hospital any time they wanted either (or Bellamy could, but probably didn't want to), then headed for the hospital.

"Gina first?" Clarke asked. 

"Yes," Lexa said. Clarke suspected that she agreed to it so that she would have Madi as an excuse to cut and run if the baby-ness got to be too much for her. She still didn't completely understand why Lexa was so uncomfortable around babies, and she probably never would, but she accepted it and was willing to accommodate it, within reason. 

They made their way to the maternity floor, knocking on the partially open door before stepping in. "We come bearing gifts," Clarke said, holding up the bag of food. 

"Oh my god," Gina said. "That smells _so good_."

"We have it on good authority that hospital food literally stinks," Lexa said. "We thought we would spare you both." Clarke went to look at the baby in Bellamy's arms while Lexa put the food on the rolling tray and brought it over to Gina's bed.

"You are a goddess among women," Gina said, pulling Lexa into a hug that Clarke was impressed to see that Lexa tolerated with good grace.

"I think the only goddess in the room right now is the tiny sleeping one," Lexa said. 

Gina smiled. "Fair enough."

"Do you want me to take her while you eat?" Clarke offered, holding out her arms to Bellamy. "I promise I won't drop her. I do actually have recent experience with very small humans." She grinned at him, and he smiled back as he handed the baby (somewhat reluctantly, she thought) over to her. She looked down at Persephone's sleeping face, blotchy and red but not overly so. She looked a lot like Veelu had, Clarke thought, but then all babies kind of looked the same when they were first born. 

Things were fairly quiet while Gina and Bellamy ate, and then conversation turned to things like baby carriers and cribs and how unprepared they felt to be parents, but it was a little late for that now, wasn't it? They all reassured them that they would be fine, and Clarke made sure that Gina had her mother's number, just in case she was in need of a perspective that knew both the mom and the medical side of things. 

"Did you want to hold her?" Gina asked, looking at Lexa. 

Lexa shook her head, forced a smile that probably looked genuine enough to everyone but Clarke. "I should actually go take this..." she held up the bag that still held one container, "before it gets cold."

"All right," Gina said, reaching out a hand to her, which Lexa took for a moment before letting go. "Thank you for coming. And for bringing food." 

"You're welcome," Lexa said. "And congratulations again... or for the first time if I forgot to say it before."

"Thank you," Gina said, beaming at her for a second before her gaze drifted back to her daughter, who Clarke was still holding.

Lexa squeezed Clarke's shoulder as she went by. "You know where to find me," she murmured, and then she was gone.

"What was that about?" Bellamy asked, his voice taking on an edge that it still got way too often when Lexa was involved in anything. 

"Seriously, Bell?" Octavia asked. 

"What?" he asked. "She's too good to—"

"Why do you always have to assume the worst of her?" Octavia challenged. "What did she ever do to you?"

Bellamy glared at her. "You mean besides attack me? Pin me against a wall by my throat?"

"Oh get over it!" Octavia snapped. "You—"

"Guys!" Lincoln said, tipping his head toward Gina, who looked like she was about to cry. 

"I'm sorry," Bellamy said, going to her side and smoothing back her hair. "I just don't understand what kind of a woman—"

Gina yanked her head away and glared at him. "You'd better think long and hard about where that sentence is going before you let it out of your mouth," she said. "You have a daughter now, and you'd better forget everything you've ever learned about what it means to be a girl."

Bellamy had the good sense to keep his mouth shut. 

"Some people just aren't that into babies," Octavia said. "The first time I held Veelu, I was pretty sure I was going to break her. It's a lot easier when they hit toddlerhood and they're basically made of rubber." She grinned. 

"I'm pretty sure the first time Lexa held Veelu was when she was already walking," Clarke said, going over to the bed to hand Persephone back to Gina. "She climbed into Lexa's lap, so she didn't really have a choice."

"Like a true Griffin woman," Octavia said. "She sees what she wants and she gets it."

"And she wanted a story, and Lexa's lap was available," Clarke said. 

"Did Lexa read her the story?" Octavia asked. 

"Of course," Clarke said. "She's not a monster." The last words were mostly aimed at Bellamy, who didn't look at any of them. Maybe she ought to cut him some slack; he'd been up all night with Gina in labor, but they hadn't slept much either and Lexa had at least managed to be civil. 

"Where did she go?" Lincoln asked. 

"To go see Madi," Clarke said. 

"Who's Madi?" Octavia asked, frowning like she was wondering if she ought to know already.

"She was one of my patients during my internship," Clarke admitted. "She's here by herself; she doesn't have any family. So we've been visiting her so she's not alone for the holidays."

"Are you allowed to do that?" Gina asked. "I would think there would be rules about that kind of thing... professional boundaries and all of that."

"She's not my patient anymore," Clarke said, trying not to sound defensive. "She's just a little girl."

There was a pause, and Clarke realized that they'd probably all assumed that she'd been talking about an adult patient. Knowing that it was actually a child... she didn't know if that made things better or worse in their eyes, and she wanted to say that she didn't care, that it didn't matter... but it did. These were her friends. This was her family. She was going to have to tell them what was going on, what they wanted to do, eventually. She was going to want – and need – their support. And what if they didn't give it? What if they thought that they were crazy, too young, too unprepared? 

"We couldn't just let her sit in a hospital room alone on Christmas," Clarke said. "No child should have to go through that, and especially not one who's already been through so much."

"What happened to her?" Gina asked, her voice soft. 

So Clarke told her. Told all of them. Not details that would violate patient confidentiality... mostly... and she omitted the part where they were planning to see about getting custody of her somehow, at least for now, but she told them as much as she dared, because she needed them to understand, and if she laid the seeds now, it would be easier later. She hoped. 

It was Octavia who finally broke the silence after she'd told (most of) the whole story, and when she looked at Clarke, she was frowning. Not like she thought she was doing the wrong thing (Clarke hoped) but definitely like she was worried about where this was all going. But her voice was gentle, or as gentle as it ever got, when she said, "Just... remember that people aren't projects, Clarke. That's all I ask."


	172. Lexa

Lexa walked away from the room quickly, not wanting to overhear what they might be saying about her in her wake. She didn't care, or she shouldn't care. But people had Opinions about women and babies and how they should and shouldn't feel about them, and as enlightened as their group of friends wanted to be (and often was), some social norms were more ingrained than others. 

She pressed the button for the elevator, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, letting go of her tension and frustration before she knocked on Madi's door. 

"Come in!" the little girl called, and Lexa pushed it open further, stepping inside to where Madi could see her. "Lexa!" She shoved aside her blankets and started to slide off the bed, but Lexa quickly closed the distance between them because Madi wasn't supposed to get out of bed without someone there to supervise her. She crouched down to accept the hug, getting her arm under her thighs and lifting her back up to set her on the edge of the bed.

"It's okay," Madi said. "They took off my Fall Risk bracelet!" She waved her wrist in Lexa's face to show her. "I can get up if I want to!" She looked past Lexa, her smile slipping slightly into a look of confusion. "Where's Clarke?"

"She'll be here soon," Lexa reassured her. "She's still visiting a friend of ours who just had a baby."

"Ohhh," Madi said. "Didn't you want to visit, too?"

"I did visit," Lexa said. "But I wanted to bring you your food before it got too cold."

"You brought me food?" Madi looked down, apparently just noticing the bag that Lexa was carrying. "What is it?"

"Just some spaghetti and meatballs and garlic bread," Lexa said. "I didn't know what you liked, but I figured just about everyone likes spaghetti." 

"I mostly like all kinds of food," Madi said. "Except not things like sardines. Once I lived at this house where the grandpa lived there and he always wore the same brown sweater and the elbows were all unraveled and he ate sardines every day and he did not smell good _at all_."

"There are definitely no sardines," Lexa said. "Here, let's get your tray." She set up the food for Madi like she had for Gina, and watched as the little girl dug in, eating like it had been ages since she'd last been fed. Given the fact that it was only mid-afternoon, lunch couldn't have been that long ago, but just because she'd been given food didn't mean that it had been anything worth eating. 

"Do you want some?" Madi asked, her voice muffled by a mouthful of pasta as she held out a piece of garlic bread. "It's really good."

Lexa shook her head. "That's okay. It's for you."

"But there's a lot," Madi said. "You can have some if you want some." 

So Lexa took a slice of the bread and ate it, and then half a meatball when Madi offered that. "Thank you," she said. She handed her a napkin to wipe her face, because sauce had splattered onto her chin and cheeks as she'd sucked up the noodles, and when she was done Lexa threw away the container. She considered texting Clarke to ask what was taking so long, but once her face was clean, Madi's attention fixed on her. "Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked.

"Is—oh, Gina's baby?" Madi nodded. Lexa decided that now wasn't the time to get into how gender wasn't binary and really it was a social construction so it shouldn't matter anyway. Instead, she just answered the question. "A girl."

"What's her name?"

"Persephone," Lexa said. "Persephone Laurel."

Madi pursed her lips, considering. "That's a big name for a little baby."

Lexa laughed. "It is. But knowing her parents and her aunt, I'm pretty sure she'll grow into it."

"Is Lexa your whole name?" Madi asked. "My whole name is Madison Rose Wagner, but I like Madi."

"Lexa is my whole first name," Lexa said, "but my full name is Lexa Chandler Woods."

Madi frowned. "Not Griffin?"

"No," Lexa said. 

"But you're married."

"Not everyone changes their name when they get married," Lexa said. "It's—" She stopped herself from launching into a lecture. "We chose not to."

Madi frowned, like she wasn't sure what to make of that, but then she brightened. "They could call her Percy for short! Like Percy Jackson. Have you read those books? I haven't read all of them, but I want to. I just haven't been able to get them."

"I haven't," Lexa said.

"I have the first one," Madi said. She slid off her bed and went to get it, pulling it from a stack of books on a little shelf in the room, and held it out to Lexa. "You can borrow it," she said. "It's mine. It doesn't belong to the hospital or anything. I guess maybe it belonged to my foster parents but they brought it to me. Well, they didn't. They gave it to my case worker and my case worker brought it to me. When I was still asleep."

Lexa had to swallow back a lot of nasty things that leapt to the tip of her tongue about the people who – from what Clarke had said – had been all set to be Madi's parents forever... until she wasn't perfect anymore. Except she was. She was absolutely perfect, as far as Lexa was concerned. She was smart and articulate and warm and funny... and yeah, maybe sometimes her brain and her body couldn't quite get themselves in synch but that wasn't really a big deal in the grand scheme of things. It just made her a little (occasionally a lot) clumsy, mostly. 

Of course the doctors hadn't known that that would be the outcome when she'd first been brought into the hospital; they had had no idea what the lasting effects of the injury to Madi's brain might have been. But they hadn't even stuck around to find out. They'd just cut and run. 

"I don't want to take your book," Lexa said. 

"Not take," Madi said. "Borrow. It wouldn't even take you that long to read, I bet. You can just bring it back when you're done."

"How about we read it together?" Lexa suggested. "I can read to you, or we can take turns."

Madi just looked at her for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she nodded hard and climbed back into bed, skootching all the way to the side and patting the space next to her. "It's okay," she said. "The nurses like me. They won't get mad."

So Lexa sat on the bed beside her and opened the book. She felt Madi lean against her side, so she wrapped her arm around her and let her rest her head on her shoulder. She told herself that it was so that Madi could see the pages and read along. 

She heard Clarke come in and glanced up, but Clarke motioned for her to keep going, so she did, until one of the nurses came in and said that it was activity time if Madi wanted to join the rest of the kids for some arts and crafts before dinner.

Madi looked torn. "We can stop there for today," Lexa said. "We'll read more tomorrow."

"Okay," Madi said, and wrapped her arms tightly around Lexa. "Promise?"

"I promise," Lexa said, pressing a kiss to the top of her head without thinking.

Madi looked up at her and smiled, and then got up and went to hug Clarke, too. "Sorry we didn't get to talk," she said. "Lexa hasn't read Percy Jackson."

"It's okay," Clarke said. "Go make something cool."

"I will," Madi said. She hugged them both a second time, and then went down the hall to the activity room. 

They went back to the car and Lexa got behind the wheel, putting the key in the ignition but not turning it. "I shouldn't have promised," she said. "It just slipped out."

"We'll come back tomorrow," Clarke said. "It's fine."

"I know, but..." Lexa sighed. "Maybe I don't know. I don't know how to do this. Maybe I'm crazy for thinking that I can, that I should even try."

"We," Clarke said gently. "Maybe you're crazy for thinking that _we_ can, that _we_ should even try. And you're not crazy. Or we both are." She hesitated, then asked, "Are you having second thoughts?"

"No," Lexa said, her jaw clenched and the word almost a growl. 

"Okay," Clarke said. "Let's go home."

Lexa nodded and turned the key, the engine rumbling to life. "You know, if we'd been thinking we would have gotten food for _ourselves_ while we were at it."

"We can fix that," Clarke said. "I've got an app for that."

* * *

The next morning they called Children and Family Services and were connected to Madi's case worker... or at least her voice mail. They left a message, and then tried again a little bit later. "I don't want to seem impatient," Clarke said, hanging up without leaving a message the second time.

"But you're impatient," Lexa said. "So am I." She slid her arm around Clarke and leaned in to kiss her temple. "We can always go see her."

"The case worker? That might—"

"No, Madi," Lexa said. "I did promise."

"Yes, you did," Clarke acknowledged. She looked at the clock, but Lexa didn't think she actually cared what it said. It was just a habit. "Okay. Let's go."

When they got to the hospital, they found that Madi wasn't alone. She was standing in the middle of her room, her face red and her fists clenched as she glared up at a middle-aged woman who had a bag slung over one shoulder and what appeared to be a crammed full accordion folder on her hip. "I don't want to!" she said. 

"I know," the woman said, sounding like she'd probably already said the same thing several times before. "Unfortunately, you don't get a choice. They need this room for a sick kid, and you're not sick anymore. You're going to go to a place where you'll do more physical therapy, and then you'll go home."

"I don't _have_ a home," Madi shouted. "No one wants me!"

Lexa couldn't stand it anymore. She stepped into the room, Clarke close at her heels. "Madi," she said gently, "what's going on?"

Madi turned to looked at her... and then threw herself at them, getting one arm around each of them and clinging. "You came!" she said. She turned to glare at the woman, who Lexa now saw had an ID badge of some kind. It wasn't a hospital one, but the name on it – Callie Cartwig – was familiar. This was Madi's case worker. "I _told_ you they'd come. They _promised_." 

The woman pressed her lips together; Lexa assumed she was suppressing a sigh. "You were right," she said. "That doesn't change the fact that you need to get your things packed up so that we can get you to the rehabilitation center."

"Is it far away?" Madi asked.

"No," Ms. Cartwig said. "It's not far."

Madi looked back at them. "Will you still come see me there? It's not far." Her eyes were huge, imploring, and Lexa's heart broke. She wanted to just pick her up and make a run for it, but of course she couldn't do that. 

"Of c—" she started to say, but Clarke nudged her sharply, stopping her with a quick shake of her head. 

"We'll do our best," Clarke said. "Okay? Why don't you pack your stuff while we talk to Ms. Cartwig?"

The case worker – Lexa assumed she was a social worker – looked at Clarke curiously, but when Madi nodded her agreement to the plan, she stepped out into the hall with them. 

"I'm Clarke Griffin," Clarke said. "I was one of Madi's physical therapists here, as part of my internship. This is my wife, Lexa Woods."

Lexa resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the inevitable look of surprise at the word wife – not because they were both women, she suspected, although it might be that too, but because of their age. She offered her hand. "We're glad that we ran into you, actually," she said. "We had left a voicemail for you earlier, but clearly you've got a lot going on today, so you probably haven't had a chance to listen to it yet."

"I haven't," she said. "What can I help you with?"

Lexa glanced back toward Madi's room, making sure that they were far enough away that there was no chance of her overhearing. "We want to adopt her," she said. "We heard what happened with her previous foster mother, and we want to make her part of our family."

Ms. Cartwig looked back and forth between them several times, trying to gauge if they were serious, sizing them up, Lexa wasn't sure, but she didn't let it faze her. She just looked calmly back... but was grateful that Clarke was standing close enough to her that their hands brushed where they hung between their bodies, keeping her grounded. 

The case worker's gaze finally settled on Clarke. "You said that you're one of her physical therapists?"

"I was," Clarke said. "I'm not anymore."

"You understand why that would be concerning?"

"Yes," Clarke said. "But I don't feel that I've done anything inappropriate. I only came to visit her when she was no longer my patient. I don't have any more input into her case, or any access to her medical files. I'm not making any decisions for or about her. I'm not anyone to her now but a person who cares about her. But I _do_ care about her. We both do. I know that this seems sudden, and that you're worried that we haven't thought it through, but we have. I think that we could be the family that she needs."

The social worker looked at them again, studying them, frowning. "If you're serious, you're going to have to go through the process of getting certified," she said. "There aren't going to be any shortcuts, and they're not going to make it easy on you. _I'm_ not going to make it easy on you. And even if you _do_ get certified, there is no guarantee that the powers that be will decide that you are the right family for this particular child."

"But it's possible," Lexa said. "If it's not possible, if you know already that we don't stand a chance, then tell us now. Don't..." She felt Clarke's fingers close around hers, and she squeezed hard. "Don't give us hope if there is none."

"It's not impossible," Ms. Cartwig said after a minute's consideration. "The odds aren't in your favor, though. You need to know that going in. You're both young. Ms. Griffin is still in school. I don't know what you do, Ms. Woods, but—"

"I'm a law student," Lexa said. 

"So you're also still in school. That might not be seen as an environment that is stable enough for a child, or they might perceive that you won't have the time to dedicate to her because you'll be busy with your own schoolwork, internships, etc. Given your ages, I don't expect you have much experience with young children, and—"

"I have a four-year-old sister," Clarke said.

"I'm an instructor at a Tae Kwon Do school," Lexa added. "I've been working with kids there for years."

"Being a parent is different," Ms. Cartwig said patiently. "It's much different than being a sibling or a teacher." She let out a breath that was almost a sigh. "But as I said, it's not impossible." She pulled a card from her bag and handed it to them. "Call this number. Get yourselves enrolled in the next orientation session for prospective foster and adoptive parents. Once you've done that, you'll be able to enroll in pre-service training, which five weeks. After that is the home study, which usually takes another four to five weeks. If you complete everything and your home study looks good, you'll be certified. In case you didn't do the math, it's going to be _at least_ three months before we would even consider placing her in your home, and it might be longer."

"We know," Clarke said calmly. And they did, because they'd looked at the information on the website, but she'd been hoping, and she was sure that Clarke had been hoping, that maybe they would make some kind of exception. Apparently not. 

And Lexa couldn't really get upset about it because it was all about doing what was best for Madi. And maybe in that time while they were doing everything that needed to be done, maybe they would find somewhere else for her to live, somewhere better. If that happened, they would accept it. They would have to. 

Her heart hurt even thinking about it. She hadn't even known this little girl a week ago, and now the idea of her not being in their lives was as painful as the thought of losing Clarke had been back in the early days of their relationship, when that had seemed a likelier outcome than her actually sticking around. 

"Does that mean we won't be able to see her during that time?" she asked. 

Ms. Cartwig frowned. "Generally speaking, yes," she said. "But generally speaking, the prospective adoptive family doesn't actually know the child ahead of time. I can't change the process that you have to go through, and I wouldn't want to." She paused, then said, "But I also need to do what's best for Madi. And I'm not convinced that separating her from you completely would be the best thing right now, when everything is so in flux for her."

They waited, and Lexa's heartbeat and breathing sounded too loud in her own ears. She tried to clamp down on the hope that was growing in her chest. It had already put down roots, and now it was threatening to blossom with every word that this woman said that belied her initial assertion that there would be no shortcuts or exceptions. 

"I'll have your names put down as approved visitors at the rehabilitation center," she said. "Beyond that, I can't make any promises."

"Thank you," Lexa said.

Clarke echoed it, adding, "We understand, and we appreciate it."

Ms. Cartwig nodded. "I'm going to go check on her," she said. "Make sure she's actually getting packed."

"Can we stay?" Clarke asked. "Until you take her?"

Another frown, but then she nodded. "All right. Just for a little while."

When they went back in, Madi had dutifully packed up her things. The only thing left out was the Percy Jackson book. "I know we have to go," she said to Ms. Cartwig, "but can we just stay long enough for one chapter?"

"Yes," she said, smiling for the first time. "We can stay long enough for that." 

Madi climbed up on her bed, and Lexa sat down beside her, feeling a little awkward knowing that the case worker was watching them, but she forced herself to ignore it. She let Madi snuggle into her side again, and held her a little tighter as she opened to the page where they'd left off the day before.

"I hope it's a long one," Madi whispered.

"Me too," Lexa whispered back, and began to read.

When they reached the end of the chapter, she put the bookmark back in. "We can read more tomorrow," she said. 

"Will you fix my hair?" Madi asked. "Please?"

"Madi," Ms. Cartwig said. "We need—"

" _Please?_ Don't you want me to look nice when we get there?"

"Just try to make it quick," she finally said. 

Madi went and retrieved her hairbrush from her bag, and to appease the case worker (who really probably did have other things she needed to do today, and other places she needed to be) she brushed and braided Madi's hair as quickly as she could without tugging. 

"See?" Madi said. "I look perfect now."

They hugged her goodbye, but told her they would see her very soon. As she climbed into the wheelchair to be taken to the case worker's car – hospital policy – Clarke handed her a piece of paper. "You can use this to decorate," she said. 

Madi looked at it, her eyes going wide. "Did you _draw_ this? Just _now_?"

Clarke nodded. Lexa looked and saw that it as a sketch of the two of them, their heads together as they looked at the page. Her eyes stung and she blinked hard to keep them from filling. 

"I love it," Madi said. "I'm going to hang it right next to my bed."

"Good," Clarke said. "Work hard, okay? We're so proud of you."

"I hope they let me keep punching things," Madi said. 

"I'll make sure to talk to them about it," Lexa said. 

Madi grinned, and then they wheeled her away. Lexa looked at Clarke, and Clarke looked back at her. 

"I'll drive," Lexa said. "You make the call."

* * *

Lexa flinched as Anya tapped her head with the end of her stick, not particularly lightly, but then she was supposed to have blocked it and hadn't, so she had no one to blame but herself. 

"Where is your head today?" Anya asked. "You're completely out of it."

"Sorry," Lexa said, which wasn't an explanation. How was she supposed to tell Anya that she was distracted by the fact that she'd spent three hours the previous evening basically listening to all of the problems that a foster child might have, and the different ways of dealing with them, and she'd been in a low-level panic ever since, even though she knew that most of them didn't apply to Madi... at least as far as she knew. But the truth was she _didn't_ really know. 

"Just focus up," Anya said. "We'll talk later." The way she said it made it clear that Lexa wasn't going to get out of it.

Lexa managed to get through the rest of class without getting hit again, which she counted as a small victory. After class ended she went to change, taking a minute in the locker room to text Clarke. They still hadn't told anyone about their plans. They hadn't actually made the decision _not_ to tell anyone... they'd just both been hesitant about how people might react, and so they'd kept it to themselves. But they were going to have to tell people sooner or later; they were already in the third week of classes, and then there would be the home study, which required personal references. 

**LEXA:** I think we need to start telling people.

**CLARKE:** I know. 

**LEXA:** Anya's noticed I'm distracted. She wants to talk.

**CLARKE:** If you're asking my permission to tell her, you have it. I kind of assumed she would be one of our references, so...

**LEXA:** Do you want to be here?

**CLARKE:** I don't need to be. I trust you. I might call my mom...

**LEXA:** Do you want me to be there?

**CLARKE:** Yes... but at the same time no. I don't know how she's going to react. Every time I'm absolutely sure I can predict what she's going to say or do, I'm wrong.

**LEXA:** I shouldn't be too late, if you want to wait 'til I'm home.

**CLARKE:** Okay. I'll see you soon. I love you.

**LEXA:** Love you too. 

She put her phone away and finished getting dressed, meeting up with Anya in the little lobby of the school. "Do you want to go somewhere, or...?"

"I need to get this one home," Anya said, inclining her head toward Tris. "She still has homework to do."

"I need Raven's help!" Tris said. "It's math with more letters than numbers!"

"Fine," Anya said. "Go get in the car."

"I call shotgun," Tris said.

"And I outrank you," Lexa said. "So..."

"Fine," Tris grumbled. She dumped her bag into the trunk and got into the back seat, making horrible faces at Lexa in the rearview mirror until she cracked a smile. 

When they got back home (and there was still a tiny piece of Lexa that would always think of this place as home) Tris went to get her backpack, grumbling as she spread things out on the table. 

"It's not as bad as all that," Raven said, sitting down next to her. 

"Says you," Tris replied. "You're an actual rocket scientist."

"Only sometimes," Raven said. 

Lexa accepted the mug of tea that Anya handed her. "Herbal," Anya told her. "You're twitchy enough without caffeine."

Lexa flashed a wry smile. "I've just got a lot going on," she said. "Classes, homework, the dojang..."

"You had all of that last semester, too," Anya said. "You weren't like this." She dropped her voice. "Is everything okay with Clarke?"

"Yes," Lexa said. "Everything's fine with Clarke. Everything's amazing." And she meant it. Everything _was_ amazing. Which theoretically could be chalked up to the honeymoon period... except they'd long since passed that. They were still happy together because they worked at being happy together. They actually talked to each other about the things that mattered to them, and supported each other, and when things weren't going perfectly, they talked about it like rational adults and figured out a way to compromise so that they were both okay with the outcome. 

"Then what's going on?" Anya said. When Lexa still hesitated, her frown deepened. "Just tell me, Lexa. Whatever it is."

Lexa swallowed and nodded. "I've told you about Madi, right? The girl that used to be one of Clarke's patients? The one that we incorporated some Tae Kwon Do into her physical therapy?"

"You've mentioned her," Anya said.

Lexa bit her lip, and finally just spit it out. "We want to adopt her. We've been taking classes to get certified as foster parents. Prospective adoptive parents. She... she needs a home, and we want it to be our home."

Anya just looked at her for a long time... it felt like hours but it was probably only a minute, and maybe not even that. "That's a big decision," she said finally. 

"I know," Lexa said, her shoulders slumping. "Believe me, if I've learned anything from the classes, it's how big a decision it is." She swallowed back tears. "I know it's crazy," she said. "I do. I don't need you to tell me—" She stopped at Anya's touch on her wrist.

"I wasn't going to," Anya said. "I mean, it _is_ crazy. I pretty sure anyone deciding to become a parent at any point in their life, under any circumstances, is a little bit insane." She glanced over at Tris with a crooked smile. "But just because it's crazy doesn't mean it's not the best, most right decision you'll ever make."

Lexa looked at her, her mouth hanging open slightly before she remembered to close it, and then she set her tea down and practically crashed into Anya, wrapping her arms around her tightly, because somehow she always knew the right thing to say. 

Anya hugged her and kissed her temple. "If there's anything I can do..."

"There is," Lexa said. "We need personal references. I was hoping—"

"Consider it done," Anya said. 

"Thank you."

She finished her tea, feeling about ten pounds lighter now that she'd actually said it out loud to one of the people whose opinion mattered more to her than anything and she hadn't had her bubble burst. Maybe she shouldn't have been surprised that Anya was supportive, though; when hadn't she been?

When she got up to leave, Tris looked up from her math. "I think you'll be an awesome mom," she said. "For what it's worth."

"Thanks," Lexa said. Because honestly? It was worth a lot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to mention this last chapter but forgot. If anyone is curious about Echo's backstory (and Ontari's, to an extent) you can read it here: [Let's Hurt Tonight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699358). Just be warned, it is quite heavy and dark, so please heed the warnings.


	173. Clarke

Clarke was tempted to wait for Lexa to get home before calling her mother... or maybe to put it off until tomorrow. Telling her tomorrow would be just as good as telling her today, wouldn't it? And if Lexa was there, at least she would have a hand to hold if things went south.

On the other hand, if things did go south, maybe it would be better for one of them to have not been through it firsthand. If they were both upset, it would be harder to find comfort. Of course, that was assuming that things went well with Anya, but Anya and Raven had taken in a teenage Tris when things at home got to be too much for her, so she kind of had to be, didn't she?

She finally picked up the phone and dialed, holding it to her ear with a white-knuckled hand, half hoping that her mother wouldn't answer.

"Hey sweetheart," she said after the second ring. "How are you? How's Lexa?"

"I'm good," Clarke said. "So is Lexa."

"I'm glad to hear it. To what do I owe the pleasure?" Because she didn't usually call her mom; most of her conversations with her were via text (like any normal person). She only picked up the phone when it was something important. Maybe she should have texted her instead. Then at least her mother would have time to have whatever reaction she was going to have before replying, and Clarke wouldn't have to deal with it. 

Too late now.

"There's something I wanted to talk to you about," Clarke said. 

"All right." Clarke heard rustling sounds. Maybe she was sitting down, or getting into a more comfortable position, but it seemed more likely that she was getting up and moving away from Marcus so she wouldn't disturb him doing whatever he was doing. Her mother had a habit of pacing when she talked anyway. "What's going on?"

"Do you remember... I think I told you about one of my patients last semester... Madi?"

"I think so," Abby said. "Eight-year-old girl who was in a car accident, had a traumatic brain injury, had full cognitive recovery but was experiencing gross and fine motor deficits of fluctuating severity." She rattled it off like a case history, like the doctor that she was.

"That's the one," Clarke said. "I don't remember if I told you that she was – is – in the foster care system."

"You did," Abby said. 

"Okay," Clarke said. "So..." She swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, and went to get a drink of water. "So she was still in the hospital at Christmas, and that was all I could think about. Her spending Christmas with no visitors, no family..."

"What did you do, Clarke?" Abby asked, but she could tell from her tone that her mother had already guessed. 

"We went to visit her. We brought her some presents."

"We?"

"Lexa and I. When I told her... she was the one who said we should go." No, that wasn't fair. It was true, but only to an extent. Like Lexa had rightly pointed out, Clarke had been looking for her to say it, even when she'd convinced herself that she was trying to do the opposite. "She wasn't my patient anymore!"

"I'm guessing we wouldn't be having this conversation if it had stopped there, would we?" 

"No," Clarke said. "We kept visiting her. We..." She took another swallow of water. "We..." She took a deep breath. "We're getting certified to be foster parents. So we can bring her home. She belongs with us."

"Oh Clarke." Frustration, exasperation... resignation. 

"She got out of the hospital the day after New Year's. We talked to her case worker and she told us what we needed to do. We kept visiting her while she was in the rehab place – which she hated, because it was full of old people." She smiled, remembering Madi throwing herself at them with an exclamation of, 'Finally! Someone else without _wrinkles_!' "Of course her definition of old is pretty much anyone over the age of 30, but she was the only kid there, so I guess I can't blame her."

She heard her mother laugh softly, and a little bit of her tension eased. "Now she's in a foster home, and thankfully her foster mother is willing to let us keep visiting her. Her name is Hannah, and she said she mostly takes emergency placements where they stay for a few days or weeks while they're looking for a more long-term home for a child. When she called us to set up the first visit, she said that Madi talked about us all the time, and she was looking forward to meeting the women behind the myth."

Abby laughed again, but it turned into a sigh. "You really care about her."

"We really do. I cared about her from the minute I met her, and Lexa did too. Watching them together... Hold on." She took her phone away from her ear and scrolled through her pictures, texting her one of Madi cuddled against Lexa while they read together, which was one of their favorite things to do. They were well into the Percy Jackson series now. "I feel like this was meant to be. When I met Lexa, I felt an instant connection. Now, when we're with her, it feels like that again."

"It's not going to be easy, Clarke. You know that."

"I know. But I also know that I had the best parents in the world, and I still have the best mom in the world, and that we can always call you for advice if we need it."

"Well played," her mother said. "She's adorable, by the way."

"And she's so smart, Mom. _So_ smart. A few more years and we might not be able to keep up. But I want to find out. We need to find out."

"Then you will," Abby said. "You're a Griffin. When you want something, you get it."

* * *

Once they finished the classes, they sweated out the several weeks of the home study, answering question after question, with Lexa becoming more and more convinced with each one that everything was being stacked against them. They kept asking about her father, about her relationship with him growing up, about her lack of relationship with him now, until she was sure that the man she'd cut out of her life was going to ruin this for them, too. Clarke tried to reassure her, but there was only so much she could say or do when it was so far out of their hands. They provided their references and then waited... and waited... and waited. Finally, on a Wednesday night as they were settling in to eat take out Chinese because they'd been too exhausted to cook, Clarke's phone rang.

She showed Lexa the name on the screen – Callie Cartwig – then picked it up. "Hello?"

"Clarke?"

"Yes. Hi."

"Hi. It's Callie. I just wanted to call to give you some good news."

"Hold on," Clarke said. "Let me put you on speaker." She tapped on the button and held the phone between them, her other hand finding Lexa's and squeezing.

"Your application got approved today. You're officially certified as foster and pre-adoptive parents."

"Holy—" Lexa breathed, thankfully stopping herself before she actually swore, although Clarke was pretty sure that the case worker had heard it all before. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me," Ms. Cartwig said. "You're the ones who did all of the work."

"What happens now?" Clarke asked. "With Madi." Because they'd been told more than once during the process that just because they wanted her didn't mean they would get her. Just because they got certified didn't mean anything. And they hadn't talked about what would happen if, when all was said and done, they still didn't get to bring her home. They hadn't talked about the possibility of taking in another child instead, because they hadn't wanted to even entertain the thought that after everything, it might not all work out. 

There was a pause, and Clarke thought she heard some papers being shuffled, but maybe she was just imagining it. "Okay," she said, " _this_ is where you can thank me." They waited for her to continue. Lexa's grip on her hand was painful, but she didn't try to wiggle out of it. The pain kept her anchored in the here and now, if nothing else. "I know that I said that there weren't going to be any shortcuts, and that you were going to have to go through the whole process, but... I may have convinced people to bend the rules. Just a little."

"What do you mean?" Lexa asked.

"Normally we wouldn't do any kind of evaluation for matching a child with a prospective family until after they had their certification, and then once it was determined that they could be a possible match, there would be a series of pre-placement visits and planning and that kind of thing, to let the prospective parents and the child ease into things. Given the fact that you've been visiting Madi all along, and Hannah has had nothing but glowing things to say about you and the way that you interact with her, I've already been working with her on a pre-placement plan, and we're going to consider the visits you've already made to be your pre-placement visits, so as long as the committee feels that you would be a good match... we'll be good to go."

Clarke swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry. "When?"

"We meet tomorrow," Callie said. 

"And then?" Clarke asked.

At the same time, Lexa asked, "How long does it usually take for a decision to be made?"

"Usually it's the same day," Callie said. "Sometimes it can take an extra day or two. I'll follow up with you by the end of the day Friday with an update."

"Okay," Clarke said. 

"Thank you," Lexa added.

"Of course. I'll talk to you soon." She hung up, leaving them sitting there staring first at the phone, and then at each other.

"That's good, right?" Clarke asked. "All of that is good?"

"I don't know," Lexa said. "What if—"

Clarke shook her head. "They won't. They have to... they have to know that this is the best place for her. This is where she wants to be. Isn't it?" 

They still hadn't actually told Madi that they were looking into adopting her. There had been too many moving parts, too many ways for things to wrong, and they hadn't wanted to get her hopes up. But she was a smart kid and she had to know that _something_ was happening. She'd even said, more than once, that she knew that she wasn't staying with Hannah forever. Once she'd even said, when they'd taken her out for the afternoon, that she wished that they would take her home, and when they said that they could take her back if she wanted them to, she'd replied, "No, to _your_ home." 

They hadn't, of course. They couldn't. But it had been very hard to bite their tongues and not tell her, 'We're trying.'

"I think so," Lexa said. "I guess we'll know soon, one way or the other."

"I guess so," Clarke agreed.

She got the call on Friday afternoon in the middle of class, and after a second's hesitation, she got up and went out into the hall to take it. She didn't want to find out anything via voicemail, or to end up playing phone tag.

"Hello?"

"Hi Clarke," Callie said. "Are you with Lexa right now?"

"No," she said. "I just stepped out of class. What's going on?"

"Give me a second," Callie said. "Let me see if I can get her on the other line. I want to talk to you both at once."

Clarke's heart sank. If it was good news, wouldn't she just tell her? Was she trying to spare her having to be the one to break it to Lexa that after everything, it had been decided that they weren't the right people to take care of Madi?

"Okay," she said, and the line went silent, but a minute later Callie was back on the line.

"Do I have you both?" she asked.

"I'm here," Clarke said.

"So am I," Lexa said.

"Good. I wanted to let you know how the hearing went." She paused, and Clarke felt her chest constricting, and she wished more than anything that Lexa was with her, that they could hold on to each other, that if she was going to drown in disappointment (and that was putting it mildly) that she wouldn't have to do it alone. "There was a lot of discussion," she went on. "A lot of concern about what was best for Madi, whether you would be able to provide a stable enough environment, whether you were prepared, at your age, to be parents at all. A lot of people had a lot of opinions, but a decision was finally made."

"Please," Lexa said, "just tell us."

"Does tomorrow at noon work for you?"

"For...?" Clarke asked, not understanding. 

"To pick Madi up and bring her home."

Silence, and then Clarke thought she heard a hastily swallowed sob. Her own eyes filled with tears and spilled and she didn't even try to stop them. "Are you... they decided... she's ours? For real?"

"For real," Callie said, and Clarke could hear the smile in her voice. She thought that maybe the case worker had secretly been rooting for them all along. "If tomorrow doesn't work – I know even though you've been hoping for almost four months, this is pretty sudden – then we can work out another time."

"No," Lexa said. "No, tomorrow is fine. Tomorrow is great."

"Wonderful. I'll see you then."

"Wait," Clarke said, before she could hang up. "Who... has anyone told Madi yet?"

"No," Callie said. "I was going to call Hannah after this and let her know that we'd agreed on a time, and let her tell her, or have me tell her."

"Can we?" Clarke said. "Can we tell her?"

"I don't see why not," Callie said. "Just give me a few minutes to talk to Hannah first, all right?"

"Okay," Clarke said. "Thank you."

"You're very welcome," she replied. "Thank _you_ for persevering. I think that, more than anything, was what won people to your side. With everything else going on in your lives, you made this a priority, and you never gave up."

"How could we?" Lexa asked. "She's ours. We don't give up on the people we love."

"I understand that now," Callie said. "Let me make this call, and I'll see you tomorrow."

"Thank you," they said again, and Callie hung up, leaving them on the line together.

"This is really happening," Lexa said. 

"Yeah."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah." Clarke laughed. "I guess I know what we're doing tonight."

"What?"

"Shopping. We need more food in the house, and we need to fix up her room, get her a toothbrush..."

"I'm sure she has a toothbrush," Lexa said with a soft laugh. 

"I want her to have a new one. I want her to know as soon as she walks in that we've done everything we can to make this her home."

"Okay," Lexa said. "Shopping it is." After a second she asked, "Shouldn't you be in class right now?"

"I stepped out when I got the call," Clarke said. 

"Shouldn't you go back?"

"After we tell her."

"Okay," Lexa said, and stayed on the line while they waited for what they thought would be long enough for Ms. Cartwig to talk to Madi's foster mother. Then Clarke dialed the number, and they waited for someone to pick up. 

"Hello?" It was Madi. Maybe Callie had given Hannah a head's up that they would calling, so she'd let Madi answer the phone. 

"Hi Madi," Clarke said. "It's us."

"Hi us," Madi said, and Clarke could hear the grin in her voice. "Do you need to talk to Miss Hannah?"

"No," Lexa said. "We called to talk to you."

"We wanted to talk to you about the plans for the weekend," Clarke said. 

"Are you not going to be able to visit?" Madi asked. 

"No," Clarke said. "That's not it. We actually wanted to tell you that you need to pack, because we're going to take you somewhere this weekend that you've wanted to visit before but you couldn't."

"Where?" Madi asked.

"Our house," Lexa said. 

"Oh, cool! For the weekend?"

"No," Lexa answered. "For forever, we hope."

A pause, and a deep breath. "What?"

"All this time we've been visiting you, we've been working on doing everything we needed to do so that you could come live with us," Clarke said. 

"So that we can be your family," Lexa added. "If that's what you want."

"YES!" Madi said, so loud that Clarke had to pull the phone away from her ear. "Yes! Really? For really really real?"

"For really really real," Lexa said quietly. 

"So you need to pack up your stuff tonight, so it's all ready to go when we come pick you up tomorrow, okay?" Clarke asked. 

"You can't come tonight?

"Ms. Cartwig needs to be there," Clarke said, "and she said tomorrow."

"Okay," Madi said, heaving a sigh. "What time tomorrow?"

"Noon," Clarke said. 

"Okay," Madi said again. 

"We'll see you tomorrow," Lexa said. 

"And every day after that," Clarke added. 

"Miss Hannah wants to talk to you," Madi said. 

"Okay," Clarke said. They waited for Hannah to get on the phone, and they briefly discussed their coming to pick her up, and how she'd gotten all of Madi's paperwork together, and printed out calendars with all of her upcoming appointments so that the transition would be as smooth as possible. They thanked her, and once she was off the line, said goodbye to each other. 

Clarke went back into the classroom, and her professor turned to look at her. For a second Clarke thought she was going to say something snarky like, 'Nice of you to decide to rejoin us,' but instead she asked, "Everything all right?"

"Yes," Clarke said. "Thank you."

She looked like she might say more, but instead she went back to the lesson. When class let out half an hour later, though, she asked Clarke to stay behind. Which Clarke dutifully did, even though all she wanted to do was get out of there and meet up with Lexa so that they could get things ready.

"You were gone a long time," her professor said. "I just want to make sure that everything really is all right."

"I got a call that I had to take," Clarke said... and realized that there was no point in hiding what was going on in her life now, from her instructor or anyone else. "It was the case worker of the little girl that my wife and I are trying to adopt. She was calling to let us know that the committee hearing for matching a foster child with a potential adoptive family was decided in our favor, and that we can bring her home tomorrow."

"Oh wow!" Her professor's eyes went wide, but then her face split into a grin. "That's amazing!"

"Yeah," Clarke said. "It is. It's... we've been dealing with that all semester, and all of the uncertainty has been really rough, but now it's all worth it. And getting to call her and tell her that she's coming home tomorrow, to what will hopefully be her forever home... that was worth playing catch-up on part of class for."

"I'll make sure that you get the lecture notes," she said. "I was worried that it was some kind of family emergency."

"No," Clarke said. "Exactly the opposite."

"Congratulations," she said. "Go on. I'm sure you have things you would much rather be doing right now."

Clarke grinned. "Just a few. Have a great weekend!"

On the way back to her car to drive home, she dialed her mom to tell her the good news. 

"Hey sweetie," Abby said. "How are you?"

"The happiest I've been since my wedding," Clarke said. 

"What—" Abby stopped. "Oh, the hearing! So it went well?"

"We're picking her up tomorrow."

"That's amazing," her mom said, and it sounded like she genuinely meant it. "Please let me know if there's anything that I can do."

"I will," Clarke said. 

"I can't wait to meet her," Abby said. 

"You're going to love her, Mom."

"I'm sure I will. I've gotta go, but I'll talk to you soon, okay? Love you."

"Love you too."

An epic Target shopping trip and a sleepless night later, they drove to Hannah's house the next day, arriving just before noon. Ms. Cartwig's car was already there, so they got out and went to the door, which was yanked open almost before they could press the bell. 

"You're here!" Madi said, hurling herself at them. Clarke caught and hugged her, and then Lexa scooped her up and carried her back into the house. She was already too big for Clarke to pick up easily, and it probably wouldn't be long before Lexa struggled, too. But for now, she was able to carry her on her hip, setting her back on her feet once they were inside. 

"Go finish getting ready," Hannah told her. "There's just a few things the grown-ups need to finish up, okay?"

"Okay," Madi said, careening off, hitting the edge of the doorway and bouncing off. 

"She's having a little bit of a rough day," Hannah said quietly. "Physically, I mean. All of the excitement seems to have sent things a little haywire, so just keep a closer eye on her than you usually would." 

"We will," Clarke said, and followed her into the kitchen where they all sat down to sign the last few papers and go over schedules, medical forms, and all of the other things that they would need to know that Hannah hadn't already shared with them along the way. 

Finally, everything was done, and they loaded Madi's suitcase and her boxes of toys and books into the car. They watched her hug Hannah and shake Callie's hand, rather more formally than one might expect from an eight-and-two-thirds-year-old. Clarke suspected she did it because she thought it was funny. They got her buckled into the back seat of the car, and Clarke watched as she waved at her former foster mom until they turned a corner and she could no longer see her.

Madi chattered the entire trip, telling them about school and the homework that she had to do because she hadn't done it last night because she was packing, and about how her class was going on a field trip next week. It was like that basically every time they saw her after a few days apart; she wanted to make sure that they were caught up on every detail. 

Finally they pulled into their driveway, and Clarke got out and opened Madi's door for her. "Can you grab your backpack?" she asked. Madi nodded and slung it on her back, and then took the lightest of the boxes, and Lexa and Clarke gathered up the other boxes and her suitcase (and it seemed like an awfully small amount of stuff for a child's entire life) and they headed upstairs. Madi's knees were wobbling as she went up the steps, and finally Lexa finished the climb, quickly dropping off the load she was carrying, and came back to take the box from Madi and offered her a hand, helping her the rest of the way up the stairs. 

Clarke pulled off Madi's shoes so she didn't have to fuss with the laces herself, and pushed open the door, letting her step in first and look around... which she did, wide-eyed, silently taking it all in. "Do you want to see your room?" she asked. 

Madi nodded, so they led her to the bedroom that they'd fixed up for her, with a new comforter printed in blocks of purple of varying shades, and soft gray sheets, and a picture of a beach sunrise that Lexa had taken printed out on canvas and hung on the wall. 

"It's really mine?" Madi asked. 

"Yes," Lexa said. "It's really yours."

"I really get to stay?"

"Yes."

Madi took another look around, and then burst into tears. 

Clarke looked at Lexa, who looked back at her, and Clarke was sure that the flicker of panic in Lexa's eyes was reflected in her own. After a second she just crouched down, offering her arms for a hug, and Madi collapsed into them. Clarke rubbed her back until she calmed down a little, and Lexa handed her a tissue to blot her eyes and blow her nose when she had subsided to sniffles. 

"I didn't mean to cry," Madi said. "I've just been wishing and wishing, but I never thought it would come true!"

"It's true," Clarke said, sinking down to the floor and letting Madi settle in her lap. 

Lexa reached over and brushed back a strand of her hair. "Welcome home."

* * *

They woke up to a knock on the door. Clarke's heart stuttered before she remembered that it wasn't just the two of them anymore. A glance at her phone told her it was still early, not quite eight o'clock. Lexa stirred beside her; Sunday was her day off from running, or any kind of exercise, which made it Clarke's favorite day of the week, or at least her favorite morning. 

"Good morning, Clarke," she said, pushing herself up to almost-sitting. 

Clarke turned to kiss her. "Good morning, Lexa," she replied, then said a little louder, "Come in."

The door cracked open, and Madi peered in. "Are you awake?" she asked. 

Clarke fought back a smile. "I don't know. Are you?"

Madi giggled. "I don't know either," she said. "Maybe I'm sleep-walking."

"Maybe this is all a dream," Lexa chimed in. "C'mere."

"I gotta go get something first," Madi said. She disappeared, and when she came back, she was holding a tray with a plate and two glasses, and Clarke cringed slightly, barely breathing until she'd made it successfully over to the bed and set it down. "I wanted to make you breakfast but I'm not allowed to use the stove so I only could make toast and juice but I found a thing – a cookie cutter, but it also can be a toast cutter – and some jam so..." She shrugged. "And juice. I would have made coffee only I don't know how."

"I'll teach you when you're older," Clarke said. "Thank you, Madi. This was very sweet of you." She looked down and saw that the toast had been cut into hearts and spread (rather thickly) with raspberry jam. 

Madi shrugged again. "I mean I know that you're not really..." She frowned. "I mean not yet, but..."

"Not what?" Lexa asked. 

"My mom. Moms. Yet. But I just wanted to do something for Mother's Day anyway because..." Another shrug. "Just because."

Clarke's eyes widened. Somehow, she'd managed to forget. Even though she'd gotten her mom a card and even though Abby was coming to visit today... somehow she'd managed to actually forget that it was Mother's Day. She could tell from the look on Lexa's face that she had too, but she had more of an excuse because she hadn't had to pay attention to it since she was Madi's age. 

"Come here," she said, holding out her arms, and Madi clambered up on the bed. Lexa steadied the juice glasses before they could get toppled. Clarke hugged her tightly and kissed her head. "Thank you, babe," she said. 

"I have a present for you, too," Madi said. "From school. They wouldn't let me make two so you'll have to share. One of the boys in my class said that I could have his since he doesn't have a mom, but it was kind of ugly so I said no thank you."

Clarke heard Lexa nearly choke on a laugh. "That was very nice of him to offer," she said. 

"Yeah," Madi said. "Really it would have been a trade because when we did Father's Day I would have given him mine because he has two dads and I have no dads but then I actually saw his and it was like..." She screwed up her face, and this time neither of them bothered to hide their laughter. 

"It's the thought that counts," Clarke said. "But we don't mind sharing."

"Okay good," Madi said. "Do you want me go get it?"

"After we eat," Lexa said, probably worried that any more jostling of the bed would end in disaster. So they ate their toast and drank their juice, and then got out of bed to go see what Madi had made, and apparently successfully hidden from them since Friday. 

"Here," she said, holding out a flower pot that was overflowing with flowers – petunias, Clarke thought – in several different colors, including some that were striped. "We painted the pots ourselves."

Lexa tipped it carefully so they could see what Madi had painted on it. It was mostly purple, because that as Madi's favorite color, but there were three little figures – not quite stick figures but not quite not stick figures – all holding hands. One blonde, one with dark hair, and a little one in the middle with hair in braids and a big smile on her face. 

Clarke felt her eyes fill with tears, and she pulled Madi into her and held her tight. "I love it," she said. 

"Me too," Lexa added, wrapping her arms around both of them. They stayed like that for a long time, until Madi started to squirm and Clarke realized that if they were all going to shower and be ready before her Mom and Marcus and Veelu got there, they needed to get moving. 

When they arrived, Clarke hugged her mom tightly, and then Veelu, and turned to find that Madi was half-hidden behind Lexa. "It's okay," she said gently. "This is my mom, and her husband Marcus, and my little sister Veelu."

"Vera," Abby said. 

"Veelu," the little girl – just turned four two days ago – said. "Hi!" She waved at Madi.

Madi waved back. "Hi."

Abby crouched down. "I'm so happy to finally meet you," she said. "Clarke has told me so much about you." 

"I'm happy to meet you, too," Madi said, but she didn't sound entirely sure about it. 

"Why don't you go show Veelu your room?" Lexa suggested. "Maybe you can do a puzzle together or something."

"Okay," Madi said. She looked at Veelu. "Want to see my room?"

"Okay!" Veelu grabbed Madi's hand and followed her down the short hallway.

"She's not usually shy," Clarke said, looking after her. 

"She's been through a lot of changes in the last few weeks and months," Abby said. "I'm sure she'll be fine in a little while. Meeting new people can be intimidating for any child, but for her the stakes are higher, aren't they?"

Her mom had a point. They all sat down in the living room, catching up on the things that had been going on in the last few weeks. For a little while everything was peaceful, but then Veelu came running in wailing, "Mommy, she won't _share_!"

"Madi?" Clarke called, but Madi was already standing in the doorway. "What's going on?"

"I only said she couldn't play with Sully," Madi said, somewhere between scared and defiant. "She can play with anything else, I don't mind, but not Sully."

"Why don't you put Sully with Stitch?" Lexa said. "So he's not where she can see him?"

"Okay," Madi said, and went to go put her beloved blue monster in their bedroom, out of reach of potentially sticky preschooler hands. 

"Sully was one of her presents from Lexa," Clarke explained, "that first Christmas. I'm willing to let her say that he's off-limits for sharing."

Abby nodded, picking up Veelu and cuddling her until she calmed down, then explained to her that sometimes people had things that were very special that they didn't want to share, and that was okay, but that Madi would share her other toys, and Veelu seemed to accept that, and a few minutes later they were playing peacefully again. 

By the time lunchtime rolled around and they all went out, Madi had gotten over her shyness and was happy to answer all of Abby's questions about school and physical therapy and Tae Kwon Do and her homes before living with Clarke and Lexa. "But I want to stay here," she said. "I want this to be my last home."

"We all want that," Abby said. "We've all got our fingers crossed for you."

Madi nodded, scooting a little bit closer to Clarke on the bench. Clarke rubbed her back lightly to reassure her that she was there, and she wasn't going anywhere, and after a minute Madi shifted back to her place equidistant between her and Lexa. 

As it got on towards evening, they said their goodbyes. Abby hugged Madi, and was hugged back without hesitation, and then hugged Clarke. "She's amazing," she said softly. "And it's obvious how much you both love her, and how much she loves you."

Clarke smiled, but it was a little bit forced, a little grim. "Now we just hurry up and wait," she said. "And hope no one changes their mind."


	174. Lexa

Lexa woke and stretched, feeling more rested than she had in months... and then looked at the time and realized why. "Shit!" She reached over and shook Clarke, then untangled herself from the sheets and practically fell out of bed in her haste. "Fuck fuck fuck..." she muttered.

"Swear jar," Clarke mumbled as she rolled over.

"Ha ha," Lexa said. One thing they had both learned as soon as there was a set of small ears to hear them and call them out was that they both swore a lot more than they realized. "It's after seven. We need to _go_."

"Shit," Clarke said, but she didn't get up. "Lexa..."

Lexa turned to look at her, and saw that she had both of her arms held out. Lexa sighed, but she couldn't help the crooked smile that tilted her lips as she went to hug her and kiss her gently. "Good morning, Clarke," she said.

"Good morning, Lexa." The look on her face was enough to melt some of Lexa's panic... and even to tempt her to just say 'fuck it' and climb back into bed. They could all use a mental health day anyway, couldn't they? Except that probably wouldn't look good to the Powers That Be, and until their adoption application went through, they had to be very careful about pretty much everything, for fear of how it might look to an outside eye. 

"I need to shower," Clarke said. "Can you get her up?"

"Got it," Lexa said, and went across the hall to Madi's room. Another thing they'd quickly learned was that their daughter – foster daughter, she reminded herself – slept like the dead... when she wasn't having nightmares. Which was something that they both understood, and thankfully had been well-covered in the classes they'd taken, but it didn't make it any more fun to try to soothe a sobbing little girl in the middle of the night when they happened. She leaned over the bed and put her hand on Madi's back, rubbing it gently. "Good morning, Madi," she said. "Time to wake up."

Madi grumbled and burrowed deeper into her pillow, and on any other morning Lexa would have taken a few minutes to cuddle and cajole her up, but today there was no time. "Come on, bug," she said. "We're running late."

Madi cracked open her eyes and pouted, but she sat up. Her hair was a disaster, and Lexa groaned inwardly. She _knew_ that she should have braided it after Madi's shower last night, but Madi had resisted, saying that when she did that it wasn't even dry the next morning, and she'd let it go. "Go on," she said. "Go pee quick so Clarke can take her shower."

Madi slouched against her, and Lexa finally gave in and put her arms around her, scooping her up and heaving herself to her feet. She carried her to the bathroom and deposited her inside. "Be quick," she said. "I'm serious." She went back into the bedroom to get dressed, hoping that Madi would do the same without prompting. 

When she was done she went out into the kitchen... and discovered that somehow they had forgotten to pack lunches the night before. They would just have to give Madi lunch money (and hope the school lunch was something edibile), and find lunch for themselves wherever they were when they got hungry. Not cost effective, but necessary. Clarke and Madi emerged from their rooms at roughly the same time, and Clarke got to work making breakfast for them while Lexa sat Madi on a stool and tried to brush through the tangles of her hair as quickly as she could.

"Ow!" Madi yelped, turning to glare at Lexa. 

"I'm sorry," Lexa said. 

"I want Clarke to do it," Madi said. 

"Clarke is making breakfast," Lexa said, as patiently as she could as she watched the clock move from one minute to the next, making them one minute closer to late dropping Madi off for school. 

"Well then _you_ make breakfast," Madi said. 

Lexa closed her eyes. One of the other things they had stressed in their classes was picking your battles, and this was not a hill she was going to die on. "Fine," she said, and went to finish making oatmeal while Clarke took the hairbrush and wrangled Madi's hair into order. 

They managed to get out of the house only five minutes later than normal, but of course there was traffic, and this would be so much easier if Madi actually went to a school near where they lived, but it had seemed unfair to pull her out of the school she'd been attending when there was only a couple of months left in the year, so the drove across town twice a day, every day, to drop her off and pick her up. They were late, but not very late, and Lexa walked her in to the office to explain, and they said it was fine, it was only a few minutes, they'd only just started morning announcements, but Lexa still felt like somewhere a big black mark had been recorded against them.

She got through her first class without anything else going wrong, and was on her way to her second when her phone rang. Clarke's name showed on the screen, so she answered. "Hey," she said.

"Hi. Madi didn't forget her backpack in your car, did she?"

"No," Lexa said. "She definitely had it when she went in."

Clarke sighed. "She must have forgotten to put her homework folder in it last night."

Which was something that they normally asked about, even though it usually got them an exasperated sigh and eyeroll, because, 'Do I _ever_ forget?'

But she'd forgotten. And they'd forgotten. But how did Clarke know that?

"Did the school call about it or something?" Lexa asked.

"I guess she kind of had a meltdown when she realized it was missing because she had a book report due today," Clarke said. "Her teacher told her that it was okay, she could turn it in tomorrow, that she was never late with her homework so she wouldn't even be marked down, but I guess she was still really upset."

"What do you want _me_ to do about it?" Lexa snapped, and then rubbed her forehead, immediately regretting it. "I'm sorry. It's not your fault and I shouldn't take out my frustration on you."

"It's okay," Clarke said. "I just thought maybe—"

"I have to go to class," Lexa said. "You know that."

"I do," Clarke said, and Lexa could hear an edge of annoyance creeping into her voice. "But you have a little time between your class and picking her up, don't you? Going to the house wouldn't take you that far out of your way, and then she could turn it in today."

Lexa sighed. "Okay," she said. "I'll try."

But there was some kind of construction going on that caused her to have to detour several blocks, and traffic was even more snarled up than usual as a result, and if she went home she definitely wouldn't make it to the school on time, so she made the decision that tomorrow was soon enough for the book report. It was only third grade, after all. She was pretty sure no one ever looked at your elementary school report cards for anything. Did they even get real grades?

Madi was apparently still mad at her, given the fact that she scowled at her in the rearview mirror the entire way home, and once they got there she sat down and did her math worksheet, grumbling the entire time about how _stupid_ and _easy_ it was. (Lexa couldn't help thinking that Raven would be proud.)

Lexa's phone buzzed, and when she checked it she saw a text from Clarke saying that she had to stay late at school to work on a project or her group was going to kill her (because she'd already forced them to reschedule once).

Lexa texted back that it was fine, but then remembered that she had promised Master Gustus that she would come help teach that night, because Aden and Tris and the other teenagers that usually helped out all had some kind of school event and wouldn't be there. Which she guessed wasn't a big deal; Madi had started taking classes pretty much as soon as she'd come to live with them.

"Madi," she called, because she'd disappeared into her room while Lexa was distracted starting dinner. "Make sure you have your stuff ready for Tae Kwon Do tonight!"

Madi came out of her room with her hands on her hips. "I'm not going."

"Yes, you are," Lexa said. 

"No, I'm not," Madi said. "I don't want to. I want to just stay home with Clarke."

"Do you—" Lexa stopped herself, forced herself to take a breath and calm down. "Clarke had to stay late at school. I don't know when she's getting home, so you have to come with me."

"Well I don't want to go," Madi said. 

"I'm sorry to hear that," Lexa said. "If you don't want to train, then you can just sit in the waiting area and read or play on your tablet, but— _Shit_!" She grabbed the pan and pulled it off the heat so that the stir fry wouldn't burn any more than it already had. 

"Swear jar," Madi said, not gleefully like she usually did, but like she was genuinely annoyed because Lexa had let her down once again. 

_Fuck you,_ Lexa thought, and hated herself for thinking it. She tried to pick around the burned bits as she put food onto a plate, but it didn't matter because Madi just turned up her nose and refused to eat it. 

They got to the dojang and Madi sat in a corner as far away from Lexa as she could get and read, and Lexa tried not to snap at the kids, who seemed to be especially loud and irritating today. She wanted to just go home after, but they had some new white belts enrolled in the adult class, and of course they showed up, and so Lexa felt obligated to stay and help out with them because pretty much everyone else decided that tonight was the night to skip. When they got home again Madi just stomped to her room and slammed the door.

Lexa shut herself in the bathroom, turning on the water to shower, but then she looked at herself in the mirror and just started to cry. She picked up her phone to text Clarke and see when she was getting home, but somehow she opened up her text conversation with Abby instead... and before she could think about it, she hit the button to call her, pressing the phone to her ear so she could hear over the sound of the running water, and tried to stop the flow of tears.

The phone rang three times, and Lexa prepared to hang up, when Abby answered. "Hey Lexa," she said. "How are you?"

Lexa tried to take a deep breath, tried to get her voice under control, but what came out was somewhere between a sob and a wail. "I can't do this!"

"Can't—" Abby's voice dropped into the tone that Lexa was sure she used when she had to calm down a distraught patient who she'd just given bad news. "What's going on, sweetie?"

"I don't know how to do this. Who the fuck do I think I am, thinking I could do this?"

"Do what?" Abby asked. 

"Be a parent! Because I'm getting it all wrong!"

She heard Abby sigh softly on the other end. "You're not," she said. "Some days just feel like it, but you're not. On the bad days, this is what I ask myself: Is she safe? Is she clothed? Is she fed? Does she know that she's loved? If you can answer yes to all four of those, you did the best that you could and tomorrow is another day."

"I can't even do that!" Lexa said, and the story of the entire disastrous day came tumbling out. 

"Take a deep breath," Abby said when she'd finished. "In through the nose, out through the mouth. You know the drill. Just take a few slow, deep breaths." Lexa did as she was told, and she felt herself calming down, at least a little. "Good. Now what's missing from the list?"

"She didn't get dinner and she's mad at me."

"Just because she's mad at you doesn't mean she doesn't know that she's loved, but I understand if you want to reinforce it. But first thing's first. Does she eat peanut butter and jelly?"

"She eats peanut butter crackers," Lexa said. "She doesn't like jelly because it makes the bread soggy. Except on toast. It's okay on toast."

"Do you think if you made her some peanut butter crackers she would eat them?"

"Maybe," Lexa said. 

"If she doesn't, at least you'll know that you tried. You can't force a child to eat, and honestly, people worry too much about one missed meal. If they're hungry, they'll eat. If it becomes a pattern of refusal, then yes, that's a cause for concern. But kids tend to be pretty self-regulating when it comes to food. And making her food shows her that you love her, too. So you check off two boxes at once."

"Okay." Lexa wasn't sure it was that simple... but then how did Anya show her love for people more often than not? Speaking of which, she was pretty sure they still had some cookies that Anya had given them the other day. She wasn't above bribing Madi with the promise of a cookie if it got some peanut butter crackers and milk into her first. 

"If you need me again, just call me," Abby said. "You're doing fine."

"Thank you," Lexa said, even if she didn't really believe it. She turned off the shower and went into the kitchen and spread peanut butter on some crackers, cut up an apple into wedges, and filled a small glass with milk, setting it on the table before going to knock on Madi's door. "I made you something to eat," she said through it. "But you have to come out."

Nothing, and then she thought she heard her moving on the other side of the door. The knob twisted and it cracked open. Lexa stepped back to give her room, and after a few seconds hesitation, Madi opened the door fully and went to the table to eat. When she was done she put her plate and cup in the dishwasher and washed her hands. 

"Can I talk to you for a minute?" Lexa asked. Madi hesitated again, then nodded and came over to sit next to her on the couch. "I'm sorry that today was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day," she said. 

"Me too," Madi said. 

"Is there anything I can do to make it better?"

Madi shook her head.

"Would a cookie help?"

"Maybe," Madi said. 

Lexa got up and got her a cookie, and one for herself while she was at it, and then she downloaded _Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day_ onto her tablet, and Madi sat next to her and let her read it... and by the time they reached the end she was snuggled up against her like she usually did when they read together. So she started reading another book, and then another. 

By the time Clarke got home, they were sprawled on the couch together with Madi leaned back against her chest. 'Is she asleep?' she mouthed to Clarke, who nodded. It took a little bit of maneuvering, but she managed to pick her up without waking her, and they tucked her into bed... and then Lexa let Clarke tuck her into bed, because that was the kind of day it had been.

* * *

Thankfully, not all days were like that. Most days were pretty good, really. They developed routines, and most of the time that kept everything running smoothly. Transitioning from having two people sharing a bathroom to three was a bit of a struggle sometimes, and with the addition of Madi's laundry they spent longer at Anya and Raven's than before, but since Raven was one of Madi's favorite people in the world (they'd bonded over having bodies that didn't always do what they wanted them to, and since the prognosis for Madi's recovery still wasn't certain, Lexa was glad that she had Raven as a role model) and it meant they got fed, there weren't really any complaints about that.

But still, somehow, despite the plethora of calendars that they kept, and the fridge covered in school papers and reminders, somehow one day they managed to miss the fact that Madi's school had a teacher in-service day. Which they didn't realize until they woke Madi up to get ready and she said, "For what? There's no school today." Due to the fact that she was still a foster child, they couldn't just have anyone watch her, either. It had to be someone who was approved by the state to provide respite care, which a few of their friends had gone through the process to do, for which they were eternally grateful, but of course no one was available on this short notice. 

"I have clinical," Clarke said. "I can't miss it, and I can't take her."

"I know," Lexa said. "It's fine. I'll figure it out." She sent a text to her professor (he'd given them his cell phone number 'for emergencies only' but as far as she was concerned this qualified. She said that she didn't want to miss class, especially this late in the semester, but that she had no one to watch her daughter, and she wasn't sure what to do.

She was a little surprised when his response was, 'Bring her.'

So she brought her, setting her up in the seat next to her with a coloring book and crayons and a puzzle book. She sat toward the back, just in case, and tried to ignore the looks that the other students gave her. Which was a whole other thing about parenting that they hadn't considered, especially with their ages and Madi's: people really seemed to struggle with the idea that they were, in fact, Madi's parents. Most people assumed that Clarke was her nanny, or they assumed that Lexa was her older sister. If they corrected people, then they got the stink-eye for one of them – and most people assumed Lexa – being a teen parent. And if they corrected them on _that_ , then suddenly they were saints or heroes. It was exhausting.

Class got started, and she did her best to focus, which wasn't actually that difficult because Madi was quiet at her side. Halfway in and her professor looked around the room as he asked, "Can anyone tell me what _ad litem_ means?"

Madi's hand shot up beside her, stretching upward to make sure that she was seen in the room full of much bigger people. Her professor looked at Lexa, an eyebrow raised, and she shrugged slightly and nodded. 

"Miss Woods?" he asked. "Can you tell me what _ad litem_ means?"

"It's Miss Wagner," Madi corrected. "At least for now. _Ad litem_ means 'for the suit'. A guardian _ad litem_ is someone who has been picked to stand up for someone – usually a child but not always – who can't stand up for themselves in court. Like when a kid is in foster care and someone wants to adopt them, they have a guardian _ad litem_ who is the one who says what they think is best for them."

"That's exactly right," he said. "Very good. Did everyone get that?"

At the end of class, he came over to shake Madi's hand. "I couldn't have explained it better myself," he said. "You're welcome back to my class any time." She grinned at him as she packed up her things. "I bet she keeps you on your toes," he said to Lexa. 

"You have no idea," she said. "Thank you."

"Any time," he said. 

"Can I come to your other classes with you?" Madi asked. 

"Raven is coming to pick you up," Lexa told her. 

"I'd rather go to class with you!" Madi protested. "It was fun!"

"Are you sure? Because I think she might have mentioned something about the science museum..."

"Oh," Madi said. "Never mind. I'll go with her!"

Lexa grinned. "I thought you might."

* * *

They'd applied to adopt Madi as soon as she'd come to live with them, but Ms. Cartwig told them that usually there was at least a six month waiting period before any decisions would be made. So when they got a call barely two months later that their application had been approved, they just stared at the phone in shock. 

"Are you...?" Lexa couldn't even finish the sentence. It would be a really cruel cosmic joke if she were to turn around and say, 'Oops, I'm sorry, that was for another case. Wrong number.' 

"Serious? Yes. Given what she's been through already, the decision was made that they wanted to finalize a placement for her sooner rather than later."

"I would have thought that it would be the other way around," Clarke said. "I would have thought that having someone change their mind about adopting her would make them – you – more cautious about proceeding, in case things didn't work out and she had to go through it all again."

"It seems to me that things are working out just fine," Callie said. "She's been thriving with the two of you. You will continue to receive support from Child and Family Services after her adoption, but we have confidence that you're not going to suddenly have second thoughts. And I know that it's what she wants. She tells me so every time she sees me."

"Okay," Lexa said. "Is there anything else that we need to do?"

"I'll need you both to come in so that we can work through some details about the things that will change when you transition from a foster situation to an adoptive one; I won't be her case worker any longer, for one. It's nothing complicated, just tying up some loose ends and making sure that we have everything in place to ensure success for everyone involved."

They set the appointment for the next day, and hung up. "Do we tell her now?" Clarke asked.

"I think maybe we should wait until after the meeting tomorrow," Lexa said. "Just in case."

"Nothing is going to go wrong," Clarke said. "It can't."

 _It can,_ Lexa thought, but she didn't say it out loud. 

They showed up at the case worker's office early, and had to wait a while to actually get in to see her, despite their appointment. Lexa reached over to put her hand on Clarke's knee, which was bouncing up and down, and Clarke looked over and smiled tightly. "Everything is going to be fine," Clarke said, but Lexa knew she was trying to convince herself more than anything.

Callie finally called them in. "Sorry about the wait," she said. "Something came up that I had to deal with right away." She smiled wryly. "Something is always coming up in this line of work. I've got everything that you need right here. Go ahead and look it over – I should have had someone give it to you while you were waiting, I wasn't even thinking – and if you have any questions, let me know."

They went through the papers, and when they got to the end, Clarke was the one who finally asked, "When will it happen?" she asked. "When will it be official?"

"The next available court date is... let me see... ah. June 24th."

Lexa looked at Clarke. Clarke looked back at her... and then they both started laughing.

"Did I miss something?" Callie asked.

"That's my birthday," Lexa said.

"And our wedding anniversary," Clarke added. 

"I joked about putting all of our significant dates on the same day so that we – I – only had to remember one date, but I didn't think I was actually serious."

"We can do another day, if you'd rather," Callie said. "It looks like you would be looking at sometime in mid-July."

"No," Lexa said. "June 24th is fine."

"All right," she said. "I'll put it in the system."

When they went to pick up Madi after school, she was surprised to see both of them; usually it was one or the other who picked her up. She looked immediately suspicious, like she knew that something was up and she wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing... but was pretty sure that it had to be a bad thing. "Why are you both here?" she asked.

Clarke looked down at her, reaching for her hand as they got nearer to the parking lot. "We just met with Ms. Cartwig."

"No," Madi said. "No no no no no!" She yanked her hand away from Clarke and started running.

"Shit." Lexa took off after her, catching up to her in a few steps and getting her arms around her to stop her headlong flight. "Madi, calm down," she said. "It's okay."

"No!" Madi said, fighting against her. "It's not okay! Don't lie to me!"

Lexa picked her up and carried her over to a picnic table, sitting down on the bench and keeping her arms tight around her as she held her in her lap. Clarke caught up with them and sat next to them, putting her hands lightly on Madi's knees. 

"Come on, Madi," she said. "Calm down. We need you to listen, okay?"

"No! I don't want to listen!" Her chin trembled. "You're going to tell me that I can't stay! You're going to tell me that they're taking me away!"

"Oh Madi," Lexa said softly. "That's not it at all."

"We met with Ms. Cartwig so that she could tell us when we go to court to sign all of the papers so that we can adopt you," Clarke said. 

Madi went still. "What?"

"You're not going anywhere," Lexa said. "We're your family. You're ours. Forever."

"When?" Madi asked. "What day?"

"June 24th," Lexa said. "Unless you mind sharing your adoption day with my birthday and our anniversary."

Madi shook her head so hard her hair flew out and Lexa had to lean back a little to not get hit in the face with a wild braid. "I don't mind."

"Okay," Clarke said. "Then it's settled." She started to get up, but Lexa touched her arm lightly, and Clarke sat back down. 

Lexa turned Madi so that she could look her full in the face. "I know that you were scared," she said, "and that you thought we were going to tell you something that you didn't want to hear, but you can't run away like that. We love you, and we will do everything that we can to keep you safe, but we need you to help us do that. Even when you're scared. Especially when you're scared. Do you understand?"

"Yes ma'am," Madi said. 

"Good," Lexa said. She hugged her and then stood her up on the bench, letting her clamber onto her back, and carried her back to the car that way.

Later that night, when her teeth were brushed and her pajamas on, Madi came out to where they were sitting on the couch. "I have a question," she said. 

Lexa put aside her book and Clarke set down her tablet, giving her their full attention like they always tried to do when she was specifically addressing them and not just chattering. 

"What's up, buttercup?" Clarke asked, which made Madi grin, but then she got serious again. 

"If I'm your family, does that mean I get to have your name, too?" Madi asked. "When you adopt me, will I not be a Wagner anymore?"

"That's up to you," Clarke said. "If you want to keep your last name, you can. There's nothing that says you have to change it."

"But what if I _do_ want to change it?" she asked. 

"Then you can," Clarke said. 

"But you don't have the same name," Madi pointed out. "Would I be a Woods or a Griffin?"

They glanced at each other. Somehow they hadn't anticipated this conversation. Lexa hadn't even thought about it. 

"We could always do what my mom and Marcus did when they had Veelu," Clarke said. "They kept their own last names, but for her last name they put them together, so she's Vera Louise Kane-Griffin."

"So you could be Madi Woods-Griffin," Lexa said. "If that's what you wanted."

Madi considered that for a moment. "Okay," she said. "Who's going to read to me tonight?"

"It's my turn," Lexa said, getting up. "Go get in bed. I'll be right there."

* * *

Lexa got out of the car and came around to the passenger's side. She looked at Clarke. "Are you ready for this?"

"No," Clarke said, smiling. "Are you?"

Lexa grinned back. "Not even a little bit." 

"Awesome," Clarke said. "Let's do it."

They walked into the courthouse with Madi between them, each of them holding one of her hands. They walked out again half an hour later with her still between them, but now she was clutching a piece of paper, a copy of her adoption certificate that had been made special when she'd asked, after they'd each taken a turn scrawling their signatures, "Where do I sign?" 

"You don't," Lexa had told her. 

"Why not?" Madi had asked. "I'm choosing you, too, aren't I?"

The judge had called for another copy to be brought, and they'd added a line for Madi to sign. So now they had a copy where, right between their names, Madi had painstakingly written, in cursive she'd only just learned, Madison Rose Woods-Griffin.

"We're getting that framed," Clarke had whispered. 

"I wouldn't expect anything less," Lexa had whispered back.

Instead of heading home, they headed for the park, where their friends had organized a combination birthday-anniversary-adoption party for them. Lexa was pretty sure that they had invited basically anyone they had ever known to it, including people from the classes they'd taken to become adoptive parents, Callie Cartwig, Madi's former foster mother Hannah, and several others from Madi's 'team' who had helped them get to this point. 

They were greeted with a huge cheer, and so many hugs Lexa started to feel a little claustrophobic and overwhelmed, and was glad when she was finally able to go get some water and something to eat. She kept a watch on Madi out of the corner of her eye, but she knew that everyone here would be looking out for her, too, so she didn't worry too much. She saw her heading for where Abby was sitting in the shade with Gina, who had to keep hauling Persephone back when she tried to crawl off the blanket. Veelu ran towards Madi when she saw her, dragging her back so that they could blow bubbles together... and it was never not going to be funny that Madi had an aunt who was almost five years younger than her. 

Luna came up to her and hugged her. "I have something for you," she said. "You posted that picture of Madi in her uniform, and it made me remember." She handed Lexa an envelope, and Lexa opened it up to find a picture of herself in her own uniform, back when she was a white belt. "She looks so much like you," Luna said. 

Lexa brought up the picture of Madi on her phone and held them side-by-side. "Wow," Anya said, looking over her shoulder. "That's a little bit eerie."

"I like it," Clarke said, worming her way into the group. "My two green-eyed girls." 

Lexa pulled her in and kissed her, listening to everyone chat as she grabbed a few bites of pasta salad. Without even really being conscious of it, she looked out at everyone gathered to check where Madi was... but her eyes snagged on someone else, hovering at the edges of the party. Someone who didn't belong... or at least who she'd assumed wouldn't want to belong.

"I'll be right back," she said, setting down her plate and squeezing Clarke's hand before heading across the grass to intercept her father before he could get any closer.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "If you've come to tell me that I'm making a mistake, that I shoudn't be doing this, you're too late. It's done."

"That's not why I'm here," Titus said, and he looked – and sounded – tired. "I didn't come here to fight with you."

"Then why are you here?" she asked, looking him straight in the eyes, a demand or a challenge.

He looked back at her, and she thought for a second that he might just walk away. Then he straightened his shoulders again and said, "I came to meet the little girl who is lucky enough to have you for a mother."

That stopped her. She hadn't known what she had expected him to say, but that had been nowhere on the list, and she didn't know how to respond. 

"Why?" she asked. "Why now? Why do you care?"

"Because I've spent the last year thinking about all of the times and ways that I've let you down," he said. "I've spent the last year realizing that it was likely that I would never be able to repair the relationship between us. Then I heard that you were adopting a little girl of your own... but not from you."

"I didn't—" She stopped when he held up his hand, and hated that she did, hated that he could still silence her.

"I thought – hoped – that maybe this would give us – me – the chance to try to rebuild – or build in the first place – a family. Our family."

Lexa frowned. She didn't trust him. He'd proven over and over again that she shouldn't trust him. Becoming a parent herself had helped her to understand a little better how hard it must have been for him, especially doing it alone, trying to balance family and career, but it had also driven home the fact that it was possible to do so, and he had never really tried to tip that balance in her favor. 

And now he was asking her to give him the chance to fuck up all over again with her daughter. His granddaughter. 

She wanted to say no. She desperately wanted to say no, she didn't need him. She had a family already, and he wasn't a part of it, and that was his loss. 

But maybe... maybe he'd finally learned, or was at least willing to try to. And he was her father, and that was supposed to mean something. It _had_ to mean something... didn't it?

"You get one chance," she said finally. " _One_. If you hurt her, let her down... if you make her shed one single tear... it's over. You never get to see her – or me – again. I couldn't protect myself from you, but I sure as hell am going to protect her."

"I understand," he said. 

She looked at him for another long moment, then called out to Madi, who came running... and then stumbled and sprawled in the grass. Lexa started to move toward her, but stopped as Madi picked herself up and came the rest of the way to them. "I fell," she said. 

"I saw that," Lexa replied, brushing a few stray bits of grass off of her. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Look!" She thrust her right arm out. "Look what Tris did!"

Lexa looked and saw that written in Sharpie on the inside of Madi's wrist was a word: 'Ohana. The same word that was inked on the inside of her own wrist, and Clarke's, and many of their friends. What had started as Echo's idea, which she'd said they could borrow, had been latched onto by other members of their friend group, and in the end something like a dozen of them had gone together to declare themselves, in indelible ink, family. Tris hadn't been old enough at the time, but Anya and Raven had made an appointment for her as a present for her eighteenth birthday, and Gina planned to get hers done as soon as she was done nursing Persephone, to celebrate having her body back.

"Wow," she said. "That's awesome." She crouched down and looked up at her father. "There's someone who wants to meet you." Not, 'There's someone I want you to meet,' because she didn't say things she didn't mean. She wondered if her father heard – and understood – the difference. She hoped that he did.

Madi looked over like she was just noticing that they weren't alone, and leaned into Lexa slightly. 

"Madi, this is my father," Lexa said. "Dad, this is Madi."

"Hi, Mr. Lexa's Dad," Madi said. Her smile had slipped away. 

He lowered himself to her level and extended a hand. "You can call me Titus," he said.

"Okay, Mr. Titus." She reached out and shook with him. "Lexa never talks about you."

"I know," he said. "I haven't given her much reason to."

"Why not?" Madi asked.

"Because I thought that other things were more important," he said. "I was wrong, but it took me a very long time to figure that out."

"Oh." Madi leaned harder into Lexa's side, and Lexa put her arm around her and hugged her. 

"It's all right, bug," she said. "Go and play. In a little while we'll have cake."

"Okay." Madi hugged her back, whispering into her ear, "You must get your being smart from your mom," before running off again. 

"Go get some food if you want it," Lexa said to her father. "And remember, it's not just me you're going to need to win back over. It's my whole family."

"I know," he said. "I'm willing to do whatever it takes."

Lexa looked at him. "I don't believe you," she said. "I wish I did, but I don't."

He nodded, like maybe he'd expected that response, or maybe he just accepted it. "Will you walk with me?" he asked. 

Lexa hesitated, then nodded. If she was going to give him a chance, she had to actually give him a chance, right? But she didn't say anything as they walked back toward the little pavilion where the food was set up. 

Finally he looked at her and said quite possibly the only thing that could actually get her talking just then: "Tell me about your daughter."

* * *

The cake was a giant sheet cake. It had to be, not just because of the number of people that it as feeding, but because of number of words that had to be fit onto it:

**Happy Birthday, Lexa!**

**Happy Anniversary, Lexa and Clarke!**

**Happy Adoption Day, Madi!**

Veelu watched raptly as they lifted the lid from the box that had been protecting it. "Is it chocolate?" she asked.

"Only half," Clarke said, and Lexa saw her fighting back a grin as Veelu charged off, no doubt to report to Echo that the cake was _half_ safe. 

Madi came over a few minutes later, brandishing a plastic cup. "Look what Echo made me!" she said.

Lexa looked in and saw what appeared to be a Shirley Temple that was at least half maraschino cherries. She looked up at Echo, who was standing nearby, obviously trying not to smirk. "Are you going to come over and put her wired self to bed?" she asked.

"This is revenge for Veelu, isn't it?" Clarke asked.

"Would _I_ do that?" Echo asked. 

"Yes," they both said. Echo just smiled.

Lexa made sure that Madi got the piece with her name on it, and let her cuddle into her lap while she ate it because it had been a long, exciting day, and she was pretty sure that Madi was starting to feel just as overwhelmed by it all as she was. She'd met most, if not all, of the people there at one point or another, but she'd never had to deal with all of them in one place at the same time. 

"Before anyone leaves," Anya said, coming up to where they were sitting (Clarke had joined them once she'd gotten her own piece of cake), "there's something that we want to give to you. So... happy birthday, anniversary, and adoption." She handed one card to each of them. 

"You can go first," Lexa said, propping her chin on Madi's shoulder. 

Madi opened her card (and who knew that adoption cards were a thing?), and confetti spilled out into her lap. "It's pineapples," she said, "and palm trees." She looked at Anya, her face scrunched up. "I don't get it."

"You will," Anya said. "Clarke next."

"Wait," Echo said, edging past a few people. "There's a present for Madi first." She knelt down and offered it to her. Madi tore into the wrapping paper, revealing a framed watercolor of Stitch. 

"''Ohana means family,'" Madi read. "Family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten.'" She pressed herself back into Lexa's arms, hugging the picture to her chest. 

"Your mama Lexa gave that to me a few years ago," Echo said, "but I thought that it should belong to you now."

"Thank you," Madi said. "I love it." 

Lexa kissed her head, her eyes stinging. Echo flashed her a smile and a wink, then backed up into the crowd of people surrounding them. She guessed this meant she would have to forgive Echo for putting her child into sugar-shock.

"Okay, _now_ Clarke," Anya directed.

Clarke opened her own card, the one for their anniversary, and inside there was a photograph of a beach. "I'm sensing a theme here," she said, showing Lexa.

Anya – and everyone else watching, which seemed to be everyone else period – just smiled at her. Clearly they were all in on this, because there was no other reason for them to be so interested in this Hallmark moment.

Lexa frowned slightly – she wasn't big on surprises when she was the target – but clearly she wasn't getting out of this, so she awkwardly reached around Madi to try to open the flap without tearing it to shreds. 

"C'mere," Clarke said, shifting Madi to her own lap so that Lexa had free use of her arms. 

"Thank you," she said, and pulled out the card. 

Inside was a plane ticket. Not a real one; someone had clearly drawn this one because real ones didn't have pictures of surfboards and umbrella drinks on them. On the ticket, in bold letters, was the destination: HAWAII.

She looked at Anya, not understanding. Then her father stepped forward and handed her a manila envelope. "The details are all in here," he said. "Flight confirmation numbers, hotel reservation... everything you need."

"You leave tomorrow," Anya said. 

Lexa looked at Clarke, who was as dumbstruck as she was. "I... I don't understand," she said. 

"It's been a hell of a year," Anya said. "We thought you deserved a vacation after everything you've been through, and to celebrate everything that's happened. Your first family vacation."

"I thought you would like a chance to show your wife and daughter the first place that you called home," her father said softly. "I wrote down the address of where we lived, too. I wasn't sure if you would remember. In case you wanted to go by so they could see where you grew up."

Lexa swallowed hard. "Thank you," she said, blinking back tears. "All of you. This is..."

"Perfect," Clarke said. "It's perfect."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to [Gamester4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gamester4/pseuds/Gamester4) if I got anything wrong about law school classes... or the definition of _ad litem_ , but I promise I did look it up first! *g*
> 
> Also, I made the whole adoption thing a lot easier for them than it probably actually would have been, because it's fiction and I can. And I have no idea if they would actually be able to travel with her that quickly because I don't know what ID you need for a kid to travel, but shhhh. FICTION.


	175. Clarke

Clarke watched Madi as she stared out the window of the airplane, even though there was nothing to see. They'd sat her between them for take-off so that she could hold on to both of their hands if she needed to (and she had, and who knew that a child that small could have a grip that strong?) but as soon as they were free to move about the cabin, she'd begged Clarke to switch with her so that she could look out the window. Finally she seemed to get bored of the view that was just sky and clouds and looked back at them. 

"Are you going to teach me how to surf?" she asked Lexa. "I know you know how. I saw the pictures." 

"I will teach you how to surf," Lexa said. "Both of you, if you want." 

"We'll see," Clarke said.

"Will there be pineapples?" Madi asked. 

"Yes," Lexa told her, "there will definitely be pineapples."

"Will there be drinks in pineapples with umbrellas in them?"

Lexa fought back a smile. "I don't see why not," she said.

"Will there be flower necklaces?"

"They're called leis, and yes, there will almost certainly be some."

"Can we go scuba diving?"

"Scuba diving requires certification, and you're too young," Lexa told her, "but I'm sure that we can go snorkeling. That's where you have the tube that sticks out above the water for you to breathe through."

"Cool," Madi said. "Will there be sharks?"

"I hope not," Lexa said. 

"What about whales?"

"I'm not sure."

"Can we see a volcano?" Madi asked. "From a helicopter?" Clarke looked at Lexa, who looked as baffled as she was. Madi looked back and forth between them. "They do helicopter rides!" she said. "I read about it online last night."

Clarke pursed her lips, trying to look stern. "Last night after we sent you to bed and told you to go to sleep?"

Madi just shrugged. "You didn't sleep either," she said. 

Lexa coughed, nearly choking on the sip of water she'd just taken, and Clarke rubbed her back, hoping that all Madi had overheard the night before was them talking and not... other things.

"We'll have to see about helicopters," Clarke said. 

"What about horses? Can we ride horses?"

"If we can't ride horses in Hawaii," Lexa said, having recovered the ability to breathe, "then we will when we get home. Master Gustus has horses."

"But not on the beach," Madi said.

"No, not on the beach," Lexa answered. 

"What about the shirts with the flowers on them like in your wedding pictures? Can we get those?" Madi asked. "You two have them but I don't have one."

"We will get you one," Clarke said. 

"One like yours," Madi said. "It has to be like yours."

"We will find ones for all of us that are the same," Lexa reassured her. 

"Okay." Madi settled back in her seat, having apparently exhausted her supply of questions for the moment, and took out her tablet. "I'm going to watch a movie," she said.

"What are you going to watch?" Clarke asked.

"Lilo and Stitch," Madi said. "Obviously."

"Obviously," Clarke agreed. Once Madi had her headphones in and was engrossed in the movie, she looked over at Lexa and grinned. "It's going to be a long flight, isn't it?"

"If we're lucky, she'll fall asleep at some point," Lexa said. "Since she obviously didn't sleep last night."

"If we're lucky, _we'll_ fall asleep at some point," Clarke said. "I don't want to spend half the trip jet-lagged." 

"I've never had a problem when I was going to earlier time zones," Lexa said. "Coming _back_ , on the other hand..."

"I guess we have that to look forward to," Clarke said. "Luckily we've got meddling friends who made sure that take that into account when going behind our backs to arrange time off for us. Which I'm still not quite sure how they did that, but I think this might be one of those times where the less we know, the better."

Lexa laughed. "Could be," she agreed. She laced her fingers through Clarke's. "Y'know... Lilo and Stitch doesn't sound like a bad way to pass a couple of hours."

"And I have a splitter for headphones," Clarke said. 

"Then I think we've got a plan."

* * *

Three days later, Clarke lounged under an umbrella on the beach, watching Madi build a sandcastle down closer to the waterline. She'd promised to stay out of the water if they weren't with her, and to stay within their line of sight, so they'd given her freedom to roam a little on her own, although from the group of kids nearby that was eying her construction, she wasn't likely to be alone for long.

Lexa came back from her trip to the beach bar that also served as a sort of snack stand with some fresh fruit and three bottles of water – one for each of them and one for Madi when she came back. She sat down in the chair next to Clarke's and reached out a sandy foot to nudge hers. "What're you thinking about?" she asked. 

"The fact that I am so happy that our family and friends decided that it would be a good idea to send us on a vacation to a place where I get to watch you wander around scantily clad most of the time," Clarke said, grinning at her. "And Christmas."

Lexa unscrewed the cap of her water bottle and flicked it at her. "Pervert," she teased, and Clarke just laughed and took the bottle from her, taking a swallow and then retrieving the cap from the blanket to screw it back on. 

"Christmas? Seriously?" Lexa asked. "It's not even July."

"I know," Clarke said. "I wasn't really thinking about it specifically, like what are we going to do for Christmas, although this will be our first Christmas as a family... _officially_ a family," she amended at Lexa's look that was as easy to read as the books that Madi complained were 'too babyish'. Their first Christmas as a family had been last Christmas, even though it had been the first time Lexa had ever met Madi. "But more in general. How it seems like so much happens for us either at Christmas or around your birthday."

"That's true," Lexa said. "Christmas, New Years, and birthdays." 

"Can you believe it's been almost five years?" 

Lexa shook her head. "Do you think if we could go back and time and tell ourselves then what our lives would be like now, that we would believe ourselves?"

Clarke snorted. "I would think that future me had lost her mind," she said. 

"Me too. But here we are."

"Which doesn't necessarily mean that we _haven't_ lost our minds," Clarke pointed out.

"That's true," Lexa agreed. "After all, I'm _crazy_ for you."

Clarke reached over to swat her gently, but Lexa caught her hand and held on, and they just stayed that way for a while, watching the waves roll up to the shore, watching Madi – their _daughter_ , and that was quite possibly the craziest, most unbelievable part of all of this, but also maybe the best – gather up shells to decorate her castle with. 

"I need my hand back," she said, and Lexa relinquished it. She dug her sketchbook out of her bag and propped it on her knees, roughing in lines quickly so she didn't lose the moment. 

When Madi finally came back to them, she was so covered in sand that Lexa immediately scooped her up, squealing, and ran down to the water to dunk her in and rinse her off. She brought her back dripping, and Clarke wrapped her up in a towel to dry her off. Madi settled at her feet, leaning against her knees, and reached for the fruit. They had quickly discovered that she was capable of eating prodigious amounts of pineapple, as well as just about any other fruit that they gave her. (With the exception of passionfruit, which was yellow here and called liliko'i. She didn't mind the flavor of when it was in things, but she wouldn't eat it raw because 'It looks like boogers!' Which was hard to argue with, because, well, it kind of did.) 

"Can we go paddleboarding?" she asked. They'd discovered on their first day here that surfing wasn't going to work out, at least not this time around. Madi didn't have the muscle strength or coordination to get herself up on the board and balance. Lexa had taken her out a few times, letting her sit on the board while she rode it in, but mostly if she wanted to surf she went out on her own. Clarke had decided after one session that it wasn't worth the ache in muscles she hadn't even known existed. But they all enjoyed paddleboarding, with Madi sitting on the front of one of their boards while they paddled her around. 

"Absolutely," Clarke said. 

"And tomorrow we're going snorkeling, right? That's what you said."

"Yes," Lexa said. "We signed up to go snorkeling tomorrow. And we're going to learn how to make leis this afternoon, remember?"

"Oh yeah!" Madi grinned. "This is the best vacation ever." 

Clarke didn't ask if she'd ever actually been on another vacation before this one; she was just happy that Madi was happy. "I'm glad you're having a good time," she said, running her hand over her hair, which was full of salt and sand, just like Lexa had said hers always was when she was a kid. They'd gotten in the habit of just having her get into the shower still in her bathing suit at the end of the day so that one of them could make sure to give her hair a good scrub before leaving her to finish cleaning the rest of her body... and then they did the same for each other, only not always in their bathing suits...

Snorkeling turned out to be amazing, although there were a few scary moments when Madi got excited and tried to talk around her snorkel, or dived too deep, but they managed to make it through the session without her actually inhaling more than a few drops of water, so they counted it as a win. Afterward, Lexa asked if they could go for a drive.

"To your house?" Clarke asked quietly. 

Lexa nodded. 

"Of course," Clarke said. They loaded Madi into their rental car and headed over winding roads – and Clarke was convinced there wasn't a single place on the entire island that didn't have an amazing view – to the place where Lexa had grown up. When they got there, Lexa parked and they got out of the car. 

"It's that one there," Lexa said, crouching so that she was at Madi's level and pointing. "That's the house where I lived until I was just about your age."

"Before your mom died," Madi said. 

"Yes, before my mom died." 

"I'm sorry that you had to leave it," Madi said. "I'm sorry that your dad took you away."

"Sometimes I'm sorry about that too," Lexa said. "But then I realize that if he hadn't, I never would have met Luna, or Anya, or Clarke, or you. And I would be much sorrier to not have all of you than I am about not getting to grow up here." She looked up at Clarke, and Clarke let her hand rest on Lexa's back, reassuring her that she was there.

A woman came out of the house, and then a boy who looked like he was maybe twelve or thirteen. "Aloha!" she called. "Are you lost?"

Lexa straightened up, and they took Madi's hands as they crossed the road. "Aloha," she said. "No, we're not lost. I was just telling them that I used to live here, when I was her age." She put her hand on Madi's head.

"Oh, did you?" she asked. 

"Before my father got reassigned," she said. "Air Force."

"And before—" Madi started, but Clarke squeezed her hand, and when Madi looked up at her she shook her head. They didn't need to tell strangers Lexa's business.

"Ah," the woman said. Clarke guessed they must be used to people from the military here, considering the proximity to the base. She extended her hand. "I'm Lana, by the way, and this is Caleb."

"Nice to meet you," Lexa said, offering her hand. "This is my wife Clarke, and our daughter Madi."

"It's lovely to meet you all," Lani said. "Did you want to come in?"

Lexa froze for a second. "That's all right. I don't want to invade your space."

"It's not an invasion when you're invited," Lana said. "Just take your shoes off at the door."

"We do that at our house, too," Madi said, slipping off her sandals as they stepped inside. 

Clarke watched Lexa's face as she looked around, taking it in. The decoration was entirely different, she was sure... although when she thought about it, she had no idea how the house might have been decorated when Lexa's mom was still around to do it, beyond the glimpses she'd gotten from the pictures in the photo album Titus had given Lexa. But the bones of the house, the layout, would be the same, unless they'd remodeled. 

"Where was your room?" Madi asked. "Can I see it?"

"It's not my room anymore, Bug," Lexa said gently, "so it won't look the same. I don't want to invade their privacy." 

"Oh," Madi said. "Well what was your favorite part of the house?"

"The lanai," Lexa said. "I liked being outdoors more than I liked being indoors."

"Let me show you," Lana said, leading them out a back door. There were flowers everywhere, climbing up the fence and cascading back down it, and it managed to be both shady and bright at the same time. 

"We had a hammock back in that corner," Lexa said. "I used to spend hours there rocking and reading."

"We should get a hammock," Madi said. 

"We would need a yard first," Clarke pointed out. 

"Yeah," Madi said. "And if we had a yard, we could get a dog! Like remember at PT there was the guy who came who had a dog that helped him? I asked him if he trained the dog to help him and he said no, he didn't, he got it from a place who trained the dogs for people like him, and he told me the name and I looked it up and before they train them someone else has to raise them from when they're puppies until they're old enough and wouldn't that be cool?"

"That sounds like something that we can talk about when we get home," Clarke said, because she could see the look of mild panic rising in Lexa's eyes. 

"Okay," Madi said. 

They only stayed another few minutes, and then thanked Lana and her son for letting them come in to see the place. "Do you want me to drive?" Clarke asked. After a second Lexa nodded and handed over the keys, and Clarke drove them back to the hotel. In their room, Lexa sat down on the couch that pulled out into a bed for Madi at night and put her head in her hands.

"Are you sad?" Madi asked. 

Lexa looked up and shook her head, pulling Madi into her lap. "No," she said. "I'm not sad."

"You look sad."

"I'm just thinking," Lexa said. 

"About what?"

Lexa was quiet for a moment, her cheek resting against Madi's hair. When she finally answered, it was Clarke that she looked at. "Going back there, seeing it... I guess I finally realized once and for all that that's not home anymore."

"What's home?" Clarke asked. 

Lexa reached for her hand and drew her in, pulling her down so she could kiss her. "This is."

* * *

On their last day, they tried to go back and do as many of the things that they'd loved best as they could. Lexa got up early to go for one last surf, and Clarke and Madi went out to the beach to watch her. They got in a snorkeling session, and went for a long paddleboard ride (where Madi nearly dumped them all into the water when she decided she wanted to switch from one board to the other without going in to shore first). They went back to the restaurants that they loved the best... and bought a case of pineapples to have shipped to them at home so that they could at least have a taste of the islands when they got back. (Theoretically they could also share them with people... but who were they kidding? So they had a second case shipped to give as gifts.) They also went on a souvenir-buying spree to make sure that they had a little something to give to everyone when they got back, since it was thanks to their family and friends that they were here in the first place. And as promised, they got matching Hawaiian shirts to wear, buying Madi's too big so that she had room to grow into it before she inevitably grew out of it. 

They watched the sun set from the beach, sitting side by side with Madi squished in between them. It was the habit that had earned her Lexa's nickname for her, Bug, short for Snugglebug, and one that Clarke hoped she wouldn't grow out of any time soon. 

"I don't want to go to sleep," Madi said as they walked back up to the hotel. "When I wake up it will all be over."

"I know," Clarke said. "But don't you want to go home and see everyone else and tell them all about it?"

"I guess so," Madi said, but she didn't sound convinced. Once they were back in their room, they washed the salt and sand from her hair one last time, and then tucked her into bed, one of them on either side of her as they read to her from a book of Hawaiian folk tales that they'd bought. Clarke watched as she fought to keep her eyes open, and finally she reached across to tap Lexa's shoulder, signaling her to stop when she reached the end of the story that she was reading. 

"I'm not tired," Madi said when Lexa closed the book. "Just one more." But then she yawned so wide it looked like her jaw ought to crack. "Okay, maybe a little tired," she admitted.

"Maybe a little," Clarke said. She hugged her and kissed her nose. "Good night, Madi."

"G'night, Mom," she said. 

Clarke blinked, assuming that it had been a slip, that she hadn't realized what she was saying. Maybe she'd misheard her...

Lexa leaned down and kissed her forehead. "Good night, little bug," she said. "I love you."

"Love you too, Mama," Madi said.

Lexa's mouth opened, but no words came out, and for a second neither of them moved. They just looked at each other. Finally they got up to go their room and Madi opened her eyes again. They stopped, and Madi's eyes flicked back and forth between them. 

"Thank you," Madi said.

"For what?" Lexa asked, her voice barely audible.

"For choosing me."

"Always," Clarke said.

When they were back in their room, they just stared at each other. Finally Clarke asked, "Did that just really happen?"

"I'm pretty sure it did, yeah."

"Maybe it was a slip?"

"Twice?" Lexa asked. "And two different names?"

Clarke had to concede the point. "Are you... okay? With that?"

"I think so," Lexa said. "Are you?"

"I think so."

"She's really ours," Lexa said, looking back toward the room they'd just left, even though they'd closed the door behind them. 

"She really is."

"And we're hers."

"We really are."

"Huh."

Clarke slid her arms around Lexa's waist, leaning into her, resting her head on her shoulder, and she felt Lexa's arms close around her. She lowered her head so that her cheek rested against Clarke's forehead, and Clarke tipped her face up to kiss her, and there was no hesitation, no resistance as Lexa's lips parted against hers, and she walked them to the bed and pressed Lexa back onto it. Moonlight streamed in through the open window, but their view was of the beach and they were high enough up that there was no way anyone could see so she didn't bother to close the drapes. 

They shed their clothing piece by piece, laying themselves bare for each other, and Lexa was soft sweet surrender beneath her as she kissed down her throat and over her breasts and belly and down, and they had to be quiet so they didn't wake Madi but that didn't stop Clarke from doing all of the things that she had learned over the years would make pleasure roll through Lexa like the waves rolled onto the beach, the tide coming in and in until it peaked, crested, and crashed into shore, and she slid up into Lexa's arms to hold her as she trembled through the aftermath of the wave's exquisite devastation. 

And then it was her turn as Lexa pressed her down, hands sliding and gripping, tracing her curves and mapping her angles and those long deft fingers finding all of the places of her that made her shiver and moan. She parted her legs and pressed her face hard into Lexa's shoulder as the tip of one finger slid over her clit, circled, dipped down into the slick wet heat of her and then came back and circled again, not enough pressure so she bucked her hips, whimpering against Lexa's throat and then groaning as over became into and not enough became yes please there _there more **more**_ please Lexa, _Lexa **please** yes **yes**_ _love yes..._

She kissed Lexa when she had breath enough in her lungs again to do so, kissed her like she was the most precious and rare and beautiful thing she had ever known because she was. She was. 

They didn't believe in soulmates... except Clarke knew, more and better than she had known or would ever know anything else in her life, that Lexa was hers, and she was Lexa's. Maybe it wasn't fate. Maybe it was a choice. But it was one that they'd made, and one that they continued to make every day.

"Thank you," she whispered. 

"For what?" Lexa asked.

"For choosing me."

Lexa kissed her softly, her nose brushing Clarke's as she whispered, "Always."

And Lexa didn't say things she didn't mean. 

"I love you," Clarke told her.

"I love you," Lexa echoed, if it counted as an echo when they overlapped.

Clarke kissed her again, one last time as her eyelids grew heavy, and Lexa kissed her back before rolling over and fitting herself into the curve of Clarke's body. And Clarke said what she always said, from the first night they'd spoken, her lips brushing the back of Lexa's neck, over the dots that broke the infinity symbol, which would not make it whole but she did it anyway because she believed now more than ever in the healing power of a kiss and the possibility of forever. "Good night, Lexa."

Lexa's answer was the softest whisper, but this time there was no door between them, nor even the space of a breath, so Clarke didn't have to wonder if she'd really heard her or not when she said, "Good night, Clarke."

And it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, friends, this is it. The final chapter. I promised you a happy ending, and I hope that I delivered. 
> 
> It's been a hell of a journey, both in the story and out of it, and a lot has happened since I started posting, to these characters, to the canon characters, and out here in reality. We have all seen dark times, and it often feels that they are unrelenting. I hope that this story has been able to be a point of light in that darkness when people needed it. I know that sharing it with you has helped keep me going through the worst days.
> 
> So thank you. Thank you to those who have been along for the journey since the very first chapter, who persevered through the slowest of slow burns. Thank you to those who found this story 30, 50, 100 chapters in. Thank you to those who are reading this after the fact as a completed work. Every single one of you means so much to me.
> 
> Thank you especially to those who have commented, here and there or on every single chapter. I'm not sure you will ever really understand what getting those notification emails means to me. And to those who have reached out through other means to offer support when things were especially dark... so simply say thank you doesn't seem adequate, but I have little else to offer. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
> 
> And although I am not generally the type to ask, I am asking now – if you have never commented, and if this story has meant anything at all, now is the time to say so. 
> 
> Of course, with all that being said... even though we have reached the end of the main arc of the story, and I will no longer be posting regularly, I very much doubt that these characters are completely done with me. There may very well be bonus stories in this world down the line, whether they focus on Clarke and Lexa (and Madi!) or other characters. If you interested in receiving notifications when something new is posted in this series, [you can subscribe here](https://archiveofourown.org/series/546589). (You do have to have an AO3 account; if you don't you'll just have to check back periodically.)
> 
> Although I don't have anything immediately queued up to start posting, please don't think that I'm going to stop writing, because believe me, that is not the case. I started a lot of stories back during my Clexathon and during Clexa Week, and I do plan to go back to them. So there will be more of our beloved girls from me. I just don't know exactly when. If you want to be notified any time I post anything, you can [subscribe to me as an author](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eternaleponine/pseuds/eternaleponine). 
> 
> And if there's anything that you would especially like to see me write, feel free to let me know. You can reach me here, via email (eternaleponine [at] gmail) or on Tumblr or Twitter as ironicsnowflake. Who knows? I might just lose my mind again and decide to post something every day for a month! ;-)
> 
> I guess that's enough rambling. Once again, thank you all for reading this story and loving these characters as much as I do. Your support has truly meant the world to me. ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [From the Dark](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13909518) by [KayLG](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KayLG/pseuds/KayLG)




End file.
